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Under the U.S. form of government, we are getting decade-record levels of unemployment and crime, but at least the rich are a little richer, if you don't coun't externalities like the crime rate and overall property values.

Just don't count on all those nearly three million newly-unemployed people to vote on election day. I wouldn't put it past Bush to do something "exciting" right before election day. After all, you have a guy who claimed that he didn't tell anyone about his drunk driving conviction because he was trying to protect his daughters, but he doesn't ask the Secret Service to lift a finger to keep them from being caught drinking underage. He simply can not be trusted. How many times did he leave the "have you ever been convicted" question blank on Texas election forms? However, there is still hope.

Everyone who's asking about the potential battery life/ polution from/ etc the fuel cells might like to read this article in scientific american. It's pretty old but gives a fair idea of what the technology involves. And heres a couple more.

Basically they have the potential for much longer battery life (magnitudes greater than lithium) and produce water and C02 as waste products. and cheap vodka could potentially be used for the fuel :)

400 employees know that managers get bonuses to meet goals that require employees to work overtime but without pay. I rarely, if ever, boycott things but I try not to shop at Wal-Mart.

Who is this analyst anyway? Is she even qualified to make this kind of distinction?

I'm curious, in a gossipy sort of way, about whether she is the Laura Didio who, as a NY-area news intern, ``assembled a group of psychic researchers'' to investigate the Amityville murders `haunted house' in 1976? She went to Fordham and worked at the Village Voice at roughly that time, but I can't find any actual dates, and Lexis-Nexis doesn't have any of the articles she apparently wrote for the Minneapolis Star & Tribune or Village Voice because it was too long ago.

Too much fructose may be bad for you too. (Many sodas and other foods are sweetened with fructose in the form of "high fructose corn syrup". Maybe that's just in countries that produce a lot of corn, like the USA.)

So on perpendicular paths, the time windows for a bird being hit by the shuttle is miniscule,

True, but improbable things do happen.

I followed one of your links and found this: Our space assets now are probably more important to warfighters and more important to our ability to win this global war on terrorism than they ever have been historically.

Here's what amazes me. America learned one lesson with 9/11: there are people who want to destroy it. But America seems to be oblivious to another lesson: they do not need high-tech weapons, weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles etc. They can use commercial airlines. They can use fertilizer. They can use off-the-shelf explosives. They can use box cutters. The Military/Industrial complex wants to fight Al Queada as if it were the Soviet Union: "we'll have bigger guns than them and then we'll win." "Iraq is developing big guns so we better invade them." But that shows a complete misunderstanding of the tactics of the real enemy. They shocked the world by using innovation rather than big guns.

wired: U.S. Could Deny GPS To Taliban

The international fear and uncertainty has become so large that the Pentagon even feld compelled to say they wouldn't enact a global GPS blackout during war time. This is obviously a completely unbearable situation for anyone besides the US government. Here is a link:

Reuters: Pentagon pledges 'no global GPS blackout'

I don't know what happened to the Russian space positioning system that was once discussed as alternative, but the European Union is completely right in that they think they have to create an alternative to GPS. Even more puzzling is the fierceness with which the USA have tried to stop Galileo (why would they do that if not to leverage their monopoly pressure?). Here is a satnews.com story about it:

EU Postpones Decision on Galileo System Until 2002

The argument of the US government against Galileo was that it "could be abused by future enemies". So you can see how the US government is using GPS to pressure others. It is very important to create an alternative to GPS, even if it's just to stop the US from bullying other nations.

So much about Galileo, but what about other reasons for a non-US space program? I think one of the most dramatic display of bullying ever to be seen by any government is what the US government semi-openly discussed according to a Reuters story this February: to deny other nations access to space:

U.S. Pentagon Sees Space as Military 'High Ground'

If any sovereign nation sees something like this, it is obvious that a big space program besides the US one is absolutely necessary. The USA have proven time and again that they are a very volatile friend who on a whim decides to deny their resources to their friends.

There was one well documented case in the Bosnian war that is quite telling. The US vehemently denied ground troops and any real war involvement of theirs in Bosnia, on the grounds that Clinton thought his political career would be over of pictures of dead soldiers arrived home. So the role of the USA was mostly reconnaissance and intelligence and they did help keeping the air space empty. However, it later turned out that they gave weapons to the rebels, in violation of NATO orders. Here is one link about it:

Washington finances ethnic warfare

This is a very serious issue, please don't take my word for it, look for yourself. There was a good joint European documentary about it a while ago, where they interviewed the NATO official in Bosnia, a Norwegian military official, and he said that the USA basically denied their allies the contractually guaranteed intelligence to cover up their covert operations.

In my eyes this kind of behaviour leaves Europe no other choice but to go for independence in space and military. Most nations have given in to US surveillance and intelligence superiority, some like Australia and Britain even joined the Echelon system. There are stories that even those very close allies do not have full access to the jointly generated intelligence. In effect, the USA is exploiting and abusing everyone else around them, and now Mr Bush has stepped over the line with his excessive bullying and the other nations are banding together.

I have been waiting for this for many years, and I am happy that it finally happened. While I despise Bush on all levels, he did something very valuable for the world. He gave them enough motivati

btw, I find it so very amusing that whenever western sources refer to the chinese space program, they just HAVE to add phrase like "secret, military linked," as if NASA is completely independent of the military, or something...

anyhoo. maybe there is still a chance for me to visit mars before I die eh? or some serious possibility of WWIII - as China and EU becomes increasingly suspicious of US... (not unwarrented or anything)

Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way.

Just a minute. I've just had a thought.

Steve and Steve.

Moonlighting? Illegitimate son? Twins, separated at birth? Enquiring minds want to know...

What isn't mentioned is that there is growing bipartisan distaste for this ruling. Trent Lott and several democrats have spoken out against it and are talking of bringing the issue to congress. Hopefully more republicans will jump off ship and support Lott and the others.

-Sean

Three words: Lunar solar power. From a long term perspective, lunar solar power is the only idea that makes sense. (It also has the virtue of being the only method we've yet discovered that would allow 1st world levels of energy consumption for everyone on Earth.)

Space exploration has languished without a raison d'etre for decades now. What better motivation could there be than eliminating the largest source of pollution on Earth, providing for the energy needs of the entire planet in the process? More info here, if you're interested.)

in other news Steve Case is no longer the largest windbag in broadband.

Mike

I wouldn't mind that one. We could follow it with an article on how to amputate limbs with pocketknives.

Pics are here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 22_030522_earthmars.html

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=62 4&ncid=753&e=10&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_sc/earth_from _mars

Here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11583

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030 522/168/45jfk.html

Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/22/earth.mar s.ap/

And Here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/viewo fearth030522.html

Here is a pic of earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1991 from more than 4 billion miles away (showing only a dot):
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/to p10_images_010925-11.html

Posting as AC, I don't seek any karma. Mod up if you want to

Pics are here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 22_030522_earthmars.html

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=62 4&ncid=753&e=10&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_sc/earth_from _mars

Here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11583

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030 522/168/45jfk.html

Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/22/earth.mar s.ap/

And Here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/viewo fearth030522.html

Here is a pic of earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1991 from more than 4 billion miles away (showing only a dot):
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/to p10_images_010925-11.html

Posting as AC, I don't seek any karma. Mod up if you want to

more info about the smell and its purpose. Google on 'corpse flower' for even more.

I find it disturbing that Tigger has no eyes there. Nevermind that confetti comes out his nose!

Didn't you read the blurb (forget about the story)... The resume doesn't have to be a valid one :) Since Microsoft is probably an equal opportunity employer, I wonder if they would consider a certain Mouse

This is what you get what you cross NHRA with Tool Time. Building stuff like this is time consuming, but especially good fun for children to watch and learn about innovation.

... some rich guy's AIBO starts going completely nuts when its email address ends up on a few dozen spam mailing lists.
Maybe it'll even maul an old lady in the process.

Hold on a second, I seem to recall seeing some of the video footage of some rallys Hitler put on and I know the 10's of thousands of chanting people weren't all part of the SS. They were mostly regular German citizens I would imagine.

Hitler did not rise to power through a coup with a few people. He did it through

• massive popularity generated with his incredible innate charisma,
• his perfect manipulation of the feelings of humiliation Germany felt from the defeat and subsequent reparations after WW1,
• and the intense poverty that was rampant for which he found the perfect scapegoat, the Jews.

In the early years of the WW2 the Nazis didn't need to draft, the German people fully supported the war due to their Hitler fueled mass hysteria. It wasn't until later when the hysteria wore off and after they started running out of able bodied men to throw into the melee that they needed to draft.

The Allies made a distinction between the SS and regular soldiers because while regular soldiers may not have deserved special prosecution and it would have been impossible to distinguish between willing soldier and forced soldier, the SS were clearly in the Devil's entourage. That does not mean that regular German soldiers were innocent or were forced to fight. The SS was a small elite group made up mostly of Hitler's early supporters in his political career. There certainly weren't enough SS to shove 6 million Jews into those ovens. Why don't you go find one of the few elderly Jews left that have a barcode on their wrist how innocent the regular German soldier was? It was probably not the average German who made lampshades out of Jewish skin but they supported the ones who did and let that level of attrocity happen. It was certainly lots of regular German soldiers who caused THIS MANY TO DIE.

I may be wrong here but you seem to be a liberal living in dream world here. Most Americans don't know what's going on in the world, you are correct, but don't fool your Euro-loving self into thinking that the average European is any better informed. Ignorance knows no geographic borders. Apparently there is still plenty of ignorance in Germany.

Compassionate? This country donates more money to worldwide charity than all others combined. Don't even bring that into the picture.

I don't trust any politician and I certainly don't agree with some US foreign policy. Still it is clear to me that our country is getting shit on from all sides and based on the cold, hard facts that Colin Powell laid out before we invaded Iraq, that we had every right to stomp that little would be Hitler. Furthermore, it really makes me angry when Europeans and especially people in this country think we shouldn't have taken him down when it should be clear after 10+ years of toying with U.N. weapons inspections playing bait and switch games and an open supporter of terrorism.

So, please tell me Mr. Anonymous Coward poster, what is rational in this world? Would you interview a Kurd or a Kuwaiti and ask if the US is compassionate? Why don't you move to France please and conduct your own form of ignorance with people that will like you.

Moreover, I bet most people don't remember David Stockman. The following paragraph is from Holly Sklar, co-author of the book, "Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All of Us."

If you want to stimulate unemployment, deficits and inequality, keep cutting taxes. More than 2 million jobs have been lost on President Bush's watch. Like the 2001 tax swindle, the 2003 tax cuts will hurt the economy, not help it. The Bush team wants to remake the tax system for the wealthy, increasingly exempting money from investments while taxing paychecks. They want a big deficit, as Reaganites did, to strangle public services they don't like. In the words of Reagan budget director David Stockman, 'Greed came to the forefront. The hogs were really feeding.'

I wonder how many people remember that Bush refused to tell anyone about his DUI conviction until a reporter found out. I'll bet he wishes that everyone would just forget about all those Texas election registration that he was legally required to complete, where he apparently left the questions asking "have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense?" blank and then signed a declaration that the form was complete to the best of his knowledge under penalties of perjury. How long is the statute of limitations for perjury in Texas, anyway?

Are you suggesting the the car is either a) transmitting that GPS data back to avis, or b) the avis guys have a black-box fitted to the car that has been storing your entire time-and-motion log, in addition to the above mentioned black-box? somehow that strikes me as paranoid fantasy.

Option b. Read about this experience with such a tracking device.

Also, the agency doesn't have to record the entire driving record, just the periods when he was going over a given limit & the location of that limit. For example, if the device flags you as going 70 and you're not within a mile of a highway with a 70MPH speed limit, its safe to assume you're speeding. In their eyes, at least.

But the best way to track this would indeed be to record, every second or 5, while the car's moving, the location and speed of a vehicle to be later analysed and cross referenced to detailed maps.

Uhm, no, according to this story at ABC News:

Among "fat cities," Houston ranks No. 1, followed by Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Dallas, according to results released this morning on Good Morning America.

So that's two in Texas, the rest up north. Two of those (Chicago, Philly) have excellent public transportation systems. So there goes your theory.

Americans in general are fat. Period. There just happens to be a much higher concentration of image- and fitness-conscious people in the cities you mention. It's a matter of culture. Go walk around the Buckhead area of Atlanta. You won't find too many fatties. All young, very image-conscious professionals. Not too many good-ole boys either. The CITY of Atlanta is 80% black, anyway.

OK Basilisk (also known as the Jesus Christ lizard because of it's ability to run on water) is taken -- but how about Cursoris? Eudibamus cursoris was possibly the first creature to walk on two legs (and the fastest in it's class because of it).

I knew he was unhappy at being relegated to the English First Division, but didn't think he'd resort to having to work for Earthlink!

Kevin Phillips

Microsoft is so embarrassed about their iLoo proposal, they have tried to claim it was all a hoax. However, ABCNews says the iLoo was real but has been killed. Microsoft can't even keep their story straight on something as ridiculous as building a computer system into a public toilet!

Republicans and Democrats are vying to figure out which tax they ought to raise to solve their problem.

Answer: The progressive taxes. In other words, don't do what California did in the 1990s.

Sweden has twice the taxes of the U.S. as a fraction of GDP, but they are far better when it comes to sustaining human life. Swedish companies like Ericson, Ikea, and Volvo are above average in their peer groups, so don't believe anyone who tells you that progressive taxes are bad for business.

Yes, it's true:

Hammers down (NSFW).

Is here. It is a slow server and will get slashdotted quickly, so someone mirror the pdf of the monkey's output if you can.

The abc news article says that it was intended more as performance art then as a real experiment.

ROME, May 8 -- Investigators analyzing computers seized from an Italian mosque say they have uncovered images of the twin towers that were downloaded just days before the 9/11 attacks, as well as a trove of pornographic photos they believe were used to conceal coded messages.

On Sept. 4, 2001, according to investigators, pictures of the World Trade Center were saved as temporary files on one of the computers at the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan -- the mosque frequented by Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, also known as Abu Saleh, an Egyptian currently on trial in absentia in Milan on charges of international terrorism.

Court documents from the ongoing Milan trial, cited by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, say that police discovered images of the World Trade Center along with numerous files that contained images downloaded from the Internet of political leaders such as President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, as well as large quantities of pornographic material, also taken from the Internet.

The images, investigators said, had been manipulated -- their colors modified -- before being sent back onto the Web. Police believe this was one of the ways that al Qaeda cell members communicated, encoding, in many instances, pornographic images that were were traded back and forth, an investigative source confirmed.

The practice is known as steganography. Read a Brian Ross report to find out more.

Police confiscated 11 computers from the Via Quaranta mosque in November 2001, according to court documents, after issuing an arrest warrant for its founder, Es Sayed, during an investigation into an Islamic terrorist cell headquartered in Milan that provided logistical support to the al Qaeda network.

Several key members of the cell have been convicted in the Italian courts, and five others are on trial in Milan, charged with association to international terrorist groups, falsification of documents and aiding illegal immigration.

Milan prosecutors believe that Es Sayed was an al Qaeda lieutenant sent to Italy to recruit new members to send to the terrorist network.

During an investigation that lasted more than two years, police recorded conversations between Es Sayed and a Yemeni man who referred to "studying airplanes."

During one wiretapped conversation in August of 2000, the Yemeni tells Es Sayed that "God willing, I hope that I can bring you a window or piece of airplane the next time we meet."

Italian investigators have never determined a direct link between the Milan cell and the Sept. 11 attacks, but the images of the twin towers that investigators say the discovered on the computer hard drive suggest that perhaps at least one of the Milan cell members had knowledge of the attacks before they occurred.

The digital evidence is still being analyzed.

Police say they found material that they describe as "interesting" on several of the confiscated computers. The hard drives of all the computers had all been erased but were reconstructed in part by computer experts collaborating with the Milan courts, the investigative source said.

In conversations recorded during more than two years of investigation, cell members often referred to computers and Web sites, and made frequent use of Internet cafes to exchange information, the source confirmed.

Although the investigators were able to determine how the images were manipulated, they have not yet been able to decode the messages that might have been conveyed by those manipulations.

According to a report in the Corriere della Sera, the Italian investigators have asked for help from experts in the United States.

Saudi Arabia Intercepts Al Qaeda Plot on Public Water Supply

May 8 -- The Saudi government has arrested 149 Saudis believed to be part of an al Qaeda network plotting poison attacks in the ki

ABC News did a show about this a while ago.

Story here.

P.S.

Parent beat me to it, I was hoping to make the first post on this ;-)

Why use humans at all? If all you need is a powersource, stick in sheep? Less troublesome by half

a) There're no sheep left after the war between humans and machines, presumably;
and 2) Your brain produces enough electricity to power a microwave. I'm not sure how other mammals compare in this regard, but I doubt they fare much better.

The caloric efficiency of using bodies as massive networked energy sources is a concept I don't buy. Cripes. Burning wood has to be more efficient.

Yeah, the efficiency thing bugged me too. You can't just keep feeding dead people to new people without losing at least the body heat of the living in the process. Perhaps there's another unexplained food source, maybe algae or something. As for trees, the sky has been 'burnt', so no solar energy gets through (which would've been the optimal solution anyway, at least until the machines develop some other source of energy based of fusion or something).

Moreover, who cares what people in the matrix think? If they revolt, so what?

Actually, I think the preceding two points you made answer this one nicely, if we consider the Matrix a stop-gap measure used by the machines to perpetuate themselves until such a time as they no longer need humans. They may even be using human scientists within the Matrix to provide solutions to problems which they, as machines, haven't the creative insight to solve for themselves. Approached from this point of view, the eventual extermination of the human race by the machines becomes an inevitablility if the humans to not wake up and overthrow them.

Lastly, this is a nitpick I know, but bullets travel at well over the speed of sound. I don't care how fast you pull the trigger, with the action of a semi-automatic, the bullets will likely be 100 feet apart between shots.

That's true if you or I are firing the gun. If an Agent inside the Matrix is firing the gun, however, the results may be somewhat different.

Of course, you still have to jump through a lot of suspension-of-disbelief hoops to buy the premise of the movie, so if you don't appreciate crazy scifi kung-fu stoner philosophy flicks with Carrie-Anne Moss in skin-tight leather outfits, you're more than welcome to spend your movie dollar seeing The Lizzie McGuire Movie

Obviously you are not versed in the teachings of Milo Rimbaldi

Within minutes of landing, Russian officials took the crew to a portable medical tent, where the men will spend about two hours adapting to gravity in reclining chairs.

If we are talking the Disney brand than quite a few of the big budget ones (i.e. the animation movies). Here is a short list to make the point:

1. 1937 Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
2. 1942 Bambi
3. 1940 Fantasia
4. 1940 Pinocchio
5. 1941 Dumbo
6. 1947 Fun And Fancy Free
7. 1946 Song Of The South
8. 1946 Make Mine Music
9. 1949 The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad
10. 1945 The Three Caballeros

I've seen everything on that list but #10. My daughter owns: 1-4; and a seperate book for #5.

Check out list of disney movies you be suprised how many titles you recognize. Now look at a list from the same years from say Universal.

Heartbeeps

I couldn't tell (even by reading the link) if this for nominating real robots and their inventors or hollywood robots. It just says real or fictional.

This is an often overlooked movie ... check it out.

Other fictional robots are Robbie from Forbidden planet and the spiders from Minority Report.

I figure advertisers will try to embed thier messages in any way they can without causing enough of a backlash, legal or social, to still make a good profit.
We may very well see increased efforts at "target marketing, or profiling
We may also see attempts to incorporate subliminal messaging in the product placement, or product intrusion in our online experiences. Such messages could be placed to prove difficult to directly link to the advertising.
Since, as far as I can tell, subliminal messages are not in themselves illegal, this can be used in advertising. They were banned by the American networks and by the National Association of Broadcasters in June of 1958.
Finally, whether or not submlibinal messages work is still in controversy

Ah you mean operation Northwoods.

Maybe in a few more years: cell phone guns

• Patently Absurd
• Wacky Patents
• Patent of the Week
• Weird and Wonderful Patents
• Totally Absurd Inventions
• Patently Weird

Yes, it's true. Read here.

You know, these terroristical A-rabs just aren't the intimidating foes that the Soviet supermen or the Aryan NAZIs were. I bet Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush wish the cold war wasn't over!

Read this.

Of this cold-war-era thing.

I didn't mean anything by it, it was just a half-joking reference to an old slashdot article that i can no longer find on that subject.

ABC News has an article that discusses data from the magnetic tape of the OESS (Orbiter Experiment Support System). According to the article, the launch data show a spike in temperature just after the foam struck the leading edge of the left wing. The spike was in the area of a sensor behind one of the left wing's spars and was registered for 40 seconds. It goes on to say that this sensor would have normally shown a steady to decreasing temperature under normal conditions.

ABC News has an article that discusses data from the magnetic tape of the OESS (Orbiter Experiment Support System). According to the article, the launch data show a spike in temperature just after the foam struck the leading edge of the left wing. The spike was in the area of a sensor behind one of the left wing's spars and was registered for 40 seconds. It goes on to say that this sensor would have normally shown a steady to decreasing temperature under normal conditions.

A lethal combination of:

• Bread & circuses.
• Those that do not know history are condemned to repeat it.
• Current Question == Unpatriotic perception.

Am I the only person who doesn't use a Cell Phone these days? Would you hold the back of a TV set to the side of your head?

Not unless you are into radiation therapy.

Granted X-rays are higher energy waves than cell phones, but that stuff adds up.