Slashdot Mirror

All of Britain's going to have 2Mbps broadband.

google are evil

first they kill bambi

next up nemo

Had a little time. Googled a bit for you. Please explain these:

Israeli forces moved about 110 Palestinians into a house, told them to stay inside, and later shelled it repeatedly

"The evidence we've gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly strong," said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch working in the Gaza Strip. "All the research so far suggests they shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags." Along with the white flag incidents, Human Rights Watch is calling for an international investigation into widespread charges that Israel prevented medical teams from helping wounded Palestinians trapped in their homes and needlessly demolished hundreds of houses, including dozens in Ezbt Abed Rabbo. "This was not a rogue unit," said Abrahams. "The needless civilian deaths resulted from concrete decisions made by the military."

Israeli soldiers entering the village: attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside; killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags; opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded; used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.

At least 40 people were killed and 55 injured when Israeli artillery shells landed outside a United Nations-run school in Gaza, UN officials have said. [...] The UN says there were no militants in the compound

Yay, a school!

About 500 people including patients were huddled in a Gaza City hospital that suffered a "direct hit" in an Israeli air strike Thursday, the international Red Cross said, condemning the incident as unacceptable.

And a hospital. It just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

Outrage as Israel bombs UN HQ, hospital, school and media building

The U.N. suspended food deliveries to Gaza and the Red Cross accused Israel of blocking medical assistance after forces fired on aid workers, killing two

Israel denies Gaza access to clean water

- all that, plus shooting children directly in the head: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4279102/Bullets-in-the-brain-shrapnel-in-the-spine-the-terrible-injuries-suffered-by-children-of-Gaza.html

Your country is a fascist state committing full scale genocide.

• Israel admits troops may have used phosphorus shells in Gaza
• Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians

Of all the potential legislation that the government have been talking about over the last few months, this music industry stuff reeks of lobbyists doing whatever they can to gain influence in Westminster. And what has been in the headlines in the UK the last few days? Ah yes, allegations that unelected members of the House of Lords are being paid by lobbyists to table amendments to UK law. Maybe there's a hurried shakedown going of this kind of overly "lobbied" legislation - before a pesky journalist joins the dots while the legislation is still on the table.

Good point. Most of the electricity around us near DC is from coal/oil, though some parts get nuclear energy as well.

You know what would work best? This.

Conceivable, you could even have small engine motor shops, that would invest on designing innovative engines, only to license them to big manufacturing companies.

That's... optimistic. When SmallBlock Ltd goes to Zaibatsu Motor Industries and Fish Gutting Mega Concern Incorporated waving their handful of patents, they'll get a hundred waved back at them.

Which is why patent trolls thrive: you can't be countersued if you don't produce anything. So SmallBlock Ltd live long enough to make a minor "invention", sells it to Trollcorp, and vanishes in a puff of stock options. Trollcorp mugs Zaibatsu, who pay up to settle the suit, and then throw the "invention" on the huge slush pile of ideas that their thousands of in house engineers will ignore anyway because it's Not Invented Here.

Nobody benefits from that. There may be a very few exceptions where the patent system plays out in the favour of a genuine inventor, but I'd have to see more case studies to believe that's a statistically significant outcome.

While news about stuff that DOESN'T matter continues to blur chipheads' view of reality, here's a list of the major contributors to the economic collapse.

Yours In Socialism,
Kilgore Trout, C.F.O.

They didn't need to wait for this, and there's already a stop the music torture initiative.

its ok Jack Bauer will save us if anything

I question whether that is really true. I've seen a few articles that would lead me to believe that the US isn't alone. In fact, I saw a recent survey in the UK where about about half of people interviewed felt that alternatives to evolution should be taught in the classroom (including 30% of teachers):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/07/creationism-intelligent-design-religion

"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"

No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.

One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.

They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine ..

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever

"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"

No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.

One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.

They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine ..

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever

"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"

No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.

One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.

They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine ..

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever

You make a good point:

a lot of the viewing public went "So what? That doesn't look so bad to me." A callous view to begin with, but tempered by the fact that they simply haven't seen or heard about the things that anyone would call torture.

I hate to ever "blame the media" because it's my industry but I think most mainstream news (especially TV) are at fault for shallow reporting, choosing to focus on the superficial (man-on-a-box picture, e.g.) instead of launching in-depth investigations like Seymour Hersh. Investigative journalism takes time and money, and angers powerful people (and advertisers). Expect to see it dwindle in North America to little or nothing in the next five years. The best we'll get is "Next on Dateline: we investigate five top-selling SUVs with safety issues you should AVOID!"

I also think people have been desensitized by the endless amounts of Saw-style torture porn they are watching and don't understand what torture really is. Maybe the awful videos and uncensored photos and documents from Abu Ghraib would wake up a desensitized nation of couch potatoes.

But on the flip side, I would hate to see the soldiers involved pilloried, crucified and scapegoated for their involvement. Abu Ghraib is a mirror reflecting what's wrong with the military chain of command, and of the attitude of many powerful politicians and businesspeople. America needs to look long and hard at that reflection and pinch that zit.

Windows Vista doesn't just cache more aggressively, though that's certainly one valid complaint. An OS generally should never page live VM pages out to disk except when there is memory contention. That means that prefetched data in the disk cache should drop to darn near zero before you start seeing paging traffic. If it doesn't, something is badly wrong. That said, this is just one of many significant memory problems with Vista.

The display subsystem is designed in such a way that any apps that use GDI for drawing get all their windows double buffered, resulting in memory bloat and poor performance (source: Guardian.co.uk). Indeed, changes in the window management system result in a huge reduction in memory footprint in Windows 7. A fifty percent reduction in backing store size is not a small improvement by any stretch of the imagination, particularly when you consider that most of that bloat represented a Vista regression relative to XP....

The OS growing to consume all available memory is a virtue is only valid if the OS uses it sensibly. If it squanders it and then ends up ejecting useful pages as a result, that is not a good thing no matter how you look at it....

Why should he be denied what the previous guy in office, who helped get us to this mess, got?

It's also paid for by private funds - not tax dollars.

It also generates revenue (tourism dollars, media ad buys, etc)

It also makes people happy to see the president they elect take the oath

It also lets the world know there is a new sheriff in town.

Wrong, it is only PARTLY paid for by private funds,MOST is from public.

This inauguration is 100+ MILLION more than any other. Obama is hardly getting less than the previous guy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/14/barack-obama-inauguration-cost

It's disappointing that Slashdot mods rated GP as a flamebait. I think the point is right. This country is in an awful state and $160 million is ridiculous.

Tell that to Fidel Castro 638 foiled attempts - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2

It is better for the environment to keep older cars operational than to waste energy/resources building new ones.

Exactly so. I'm damned tired of being told my past good behavior is to be dismissed in favor of the latest fad/trend.

I worked for years in a job where I really couldn't afford to take my family on a decent vacation. For all those years, I took public transportation to work. When I finally got enough ahead to be able to take a vacation, the first Arab oil crisis came on. Suddenly I'm being regarded as a bad citizen for wanting to make up a little for all those years of no vacations. And no credit at all for years of riding low-polluting mass transit to work.

I also drove a cheapie VW Bug for years, getting far better mileage than my peers. But, oh no, no reward for years of driving the more efficient small car.

Now I'm on a fixed income and am being told that the foreign car I'm driving should be turned over to the government for a pittance, then to "upgrade" to a new car and a new (unaffordable) loan that's more than I originally paid for my house. My car is over twenty years old, still gets 32 miles per gallon (and not on the flats of Kansas, but in a very hilly metropolitan area) and has never failed its (tough) California smog test. Meanwhile carmakers, both foreign and domestic, are pawing the ground and bellowing that they have "six models that get over 30 mpg".

Shit, my old car still gets more than that after twenty years (and over 220,000 miles -- on the original engine) of even better mileage. I suppose you'll now say that the 32 mpg I get pollutes more than the newer versions. Tough shit -- you can move the goalposts anywhere you want on the field, but I've been doing better than most of today's new cars since before some of you were born.

And don't believe that crap about a Prius getting 40 mpg. Maybe in Kansas, but not in an area where there are contour lines on maps. Check with real Prius owners. The 40 mpg number is calculated, just like the "EPA estimates" were for years. They did all their numbers on a dyno, not with real people on real roads. Shit, they didn't even measure the actual amount of gas used in their tests. Instead, they decided to do it "scientifically" -- for which, read "magically/mystically". Instead of really measuring it, they used instruments to sniff components coming out the tailpipe and extrapolated gallons of gas from that crap. Has anyone outside of Kansas ever gotten the "EPA estimate"?

See "Is Kansas flat as a pancake?" http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/sep/25/research.highereducation2 if you;re not familiar with the topography there.

Does his remind you of the story attributed to Francis Bacon? For those not familiar with it:

In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.

but essentially everybody can send an invoice to everybody. Normally it is assumed that bad invoices happen as an *accidental error* , in this case it is expected that you actively deny the validity invoice.

Expected or required? It's unjust that an innocent party incurs costs (even if it's only postage, there's a principle here) due to someone else's error or fraud.

If the judge decides it is invalid, is the sender penalised? Seems there's not much disincentive to issue fraudulent invoices. Does Germany have anything like the UK Unsolicited Goods and Services Act?

yea, you need to learn how to read... your post makes no sense, and your claims are not supported by reality.

most people i know pirate music. that is often how they are first exposed to new artists/bands. as a result of this exposure, they go out and see shows by these artists and buy their albums & merchandise. the artist & record labels benefit from this, but their initial pirated download is still considered illegal. so it doesn't matter if 95% of music downloads are illegal. illegal downloads don't cost musicians or record labels any money. and if the result is a net increase in overall sales, then it's still good for business.

what you do or don't consider a good thing is meaningless as you seem to have a very poor grasp of economics. also, i'm glad you think that it's ok for people to be screwed over as long as it's not you. clearly you're a very enlightened person. luckily not everyone thinks that way, and it's certainly not why i promote file sharing. if i thought that file sharing hurt record labels, then i would not be promoting it, as i work for one, and they sign my paychecks.

Crawford, a Pentagon official who last year was put in charge of military commissions that decide whether detainees should be tried, told the Washington Post: "We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture. -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/15/guantanamo-bush-administration-torture-qahtani

Except they don't need to wear uniforms to not be tortured but the US did it anyway. Geneva convention FAIL.

'Crawford, a Pentagon official who last year was put in charge of military commissions that decide whether detainees should be tried, told the Washington Post: "We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.'
-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/15/guantanamo-bush-administration-torture-qahtani

Fuck you very much. If they have no rights, they will be tortured, and you've given your implicit consent.

If the warrants can be issued retroactively, then there is really no point in getting the order except as some sort of CYA.

Getting the warrant allows the evidence to be used in court. No warrant - no evidence. At least until yesterday.

That is one reason we have a PRESIDENT, not KING.

Okay, so how do reconcile that idea with the concept of Presidential Pardons?

Now that a senior member of the Bush administration has admitted "We tortured Qahtani", it is widely expected that pardons will be issued to those people involved in approving the use of torture. As an Australian, I wasn't really aware of this power of the US President, but after reading up on it and on the people who have received pardons in the past I have to say that it's pretty much putting the power of a dictator in the president's hands. I mean, Clinton used it to help his brother beat a drug rap FFS.

You might be interested to know that the Appolo astronauts saw bright flashes as a result of cosmic rays passing through their vitreous humour.

The same phenomenon has even been experienced closer to Earth on Mir and at least one soviet cosmonaut is attributing his cataracts to space radiation.

Just a quick read seems to indicate that you have an objection to being identifiable when visting the U.S.

Considering that some of the individuals that conducted the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in September 2001 were in the country beyond the limits of their visas, even past expiration, we may be excused for some recent interest in being a little more diligent in our immigration functions.

I doubt we do a much better job of enforcing even the laws on the books since before 2001. But having to answer a few questions and actually identify your self to enter our country doesn't seem much of a burden. I wonder what countries I could visit without significant identification? The U.K. for sure. Canada, mostly. Mexico? Yup. Japan? Nope, get printed there. Thailand, sadly, probably. China? Saudi Arabia? Spain? I wonder.

The U.S. is incredibly liberal about which foreign nationals it admits, grants the right to work, and ultimately permits residency to. Your complaint is noted. There is a line behind you trying to get in. You may want to move out of their way.

As NZer, one of the huge issues with have with hydro is that the capacity varies, and due to environmental regulations we don't have enough fossil backup. As a consequence, in winter there is a period where everyone prays for rain, and if there isn't enough of it, the lights go out and the country incurs hundreds of millions of dollars in costs due to lost productivity.

Israel should not apologize for responding to constant, daily, continuous (yep, repeating this point on purpose) terrorism from the palestinians

Perhaps not, however they should for killing TV reporters in the area. The famous case often replayed on the TV in the UK and Israel never apologises for cases where it was pretty obvious after investigations and watching live TV footage that they had shot people for the sheer enjoyment of it. Not because they were believed to be armed as is often the excuse of the Israeli army.

Do we have to bring out links of 13 year old girls getting murdered?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2

Picture your 13 year old girl getting shot multiple times by some asshole. Ask yourself would you join in the fight if all your family were collateral damage, you were starving to death and basically didn't have anything left to live for?

This doesn't even need an answer, of course you would. If Israel allowed foreign aid into the area and stopped killing civilians then eventually Palestinians would stop rocket bombing Israel and then world would be a better place.

Not true, see for example this argument: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4111684,00.html

BBC iPlayer was 5% of UK internet traffic back in April. It's got a lot more popular since - I would be surprised if it was not 10% by now.

Late Sunday afternoon is a good time to be thinking about grabbing something to watch that evening. iPlayer downloads are very fast so you don't need to think about it any earlier than an hour before you want to watch it.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE6D7123AF933A15757C0A9659C8B63
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1429096/British-cameraman-shot-dead-by-Israeli-soldiers.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/06/israel2
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/889281.html
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/item.aspx?type=photo&photo_id=0eY4akVfByfWH&tid=05YG14l3Yj8zn&pn=1
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5480&Cr=unrwa&Cr1=

None of those are Reuters, none of those are BBC.

• 2000: Israel/Palestine: Armed Attacks on Civilians Condemned
• 2001: Israeli Missiles Kill Two Kids
• 2002: Panel to look into civilian deaths in 2002 IAF attack on Shehadeh
• 2003: Secrecy over shoot-to-kill fear in Gaza, Two journalists have been gunned down by Israeli troops
• 2004: TOTALS FOR 2004: Israelis: 8 Palestinians: 188
• 2005: Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order
• 2006: Teenager killed as missile explodes near school bus
• 2007: Israeli army says three children killed in Gaza were playing
• 2008: Palestinian group says Israelis killed 68 children in Gaza in year
• 2009: Israel Hits Second U.N. School, Blasts Way Into Southern Gaza

That's bullshit. Stating that "It's just the soldier's job" is the same nonsense that it was at the Nuremberg trials. Soldiers are people and they are expected to refuse both immoral and illegal orders.

maybe we shouldn't vote in bloodthirsty psychos

As opposed to the Israeli leadership?
Belgium bars Sharon war crimes trial
The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?

I make no claims that the Hamas leadership is a bunch of nice guys, but you may want to do some more reseach on Israel. I'm sure you can find at least as many bad things to say about Hamas, but as the saying goes:
"Two wrongs don't make a right."

The IDF has always attacked military targets

• 2000: Israel/Palestine: Armed Attacks on Civilians Condemned
• 2001: Israeli Missiles Kill Two Kids
• 2002: Panel to look into civilian deaths in 2002 IAF attack on Shehadeh
• 2003: Secrecy over shoot-to-kill fear in Gaza, Two journalists have been gunned down by Israeli troops
• 2004: TOTALS FOR 2004: Israelis: 8 Palestinians: 188
• 2005: Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order
• 2006: Teenager killed as missile explodes near school bus
• 2007: Israeli army says three children killed in Gaza were playing
• 2008: Palestinian group says Israelis killed 68 children in Gaza in year
• 2009: Israel Hits Second U.N. School, Blasts Way Into Southern Gaza

That's bullshit. Stating that "It's just the soldier's job" is the same nonsense that it was at the Nuremberg trials. Soldiers are people and they are expected to refuse both immoral and illegal orders.

maybe we shouldn't vote in bloodthirsty psychos

As opposed to the Israeli leadership?
Belgium bars Sharon war crimes trial
The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?

I make no claims that the Hamas leadership is a bunch of nice guys, but you may want to do some more reseach on Israel. I'm sure you can find at least as many bad things to say about Hamas, but as the saying goes:
"Two wrongs don't make a right."

The IDF has always attacked military targets

• 2000: Israel/Palestine: Armed Attacks on Civilians Condemned
• 2001: Israeli Missiles Kill Two Kids
• 2002: Panel to look into civilian deaths in 2002 IAF attack on Shehadeh
• 2003: Secrecy over shoot-to-kill fear in Gaza, Two journalists have been gunned down by Israeli troops
• 2004: TOTALS FOR 2004: Israelis: 8 Palestinians: 188
• 2005: Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order
• 2006: Teenager killed as missile explodes near school bus
• 2007: Israeli army says three children killed in Gaza were playing
• 2008: Palestinian group says Israelis killed 68 children in Gaza in year
• 2009: Israel Hits Second U.N. School, Blasts Way Into Southern Gaza

That's bullshit. Stating that "It's just the soldier's job" is the same nonsense that it was at the Nuremberg trials. Soldiers are people and they are expected to refuse both immoral and illegal orders.

maybe we shouldn't vote in bloodthirsty psychos

As opposed to the Israeli leadership?
Belgium bars Sharon war crimes trial
The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?

I make no claims that the Hamas leadership is a bunch of nice guys, but you may want to do some more reseach on Israel. I'm sure you can find at least as many bad things to say about Hamas, but as the saying goes:
"Two wrongs don't make a right."

The IDF has always attacked military targets

Talk about ignoring history:

You might want a lesson from
Avi Shlalm, professor of international relations at Oxford.

*before* the ceasefire ending Hamas fired almost 3000 rockets into Israel. I'd say they broke the ceasefire well before the IDF "provoked" them.

Many others report Israel broke the cease fire - the bottom line is that both sides have continued to fight. It's a red herring to suggest one side acted in an unprovoked manner - that's simply bogus.

Who shot first is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that Israel has been condemned by the United Nations more than 50 times for refusing to follow various agreed-upon conventions. Israel has been systematically driving the Palestinians off their own land and taking it over. That's a fact. That's not something you can accuse the arabs of doing. If you bulldoze someone's house. If you make them have to pass through armed checkpoints and hostile guards to get to work. If you break their cities into little pieces by building an illegal wall around their settlements, you shouldn't be surprise if some of these people react. The irony is that Israel is slowly committing genocide on the Palestinians and nobody's doing anything about it. The United States is funding the genocide to the tune of $6,000,000,000.00 a year now in an elaborate kickback scheme involving military defense contractors and the US's most powerful lobbying group: AIPAC. There's no motivation for Israel to make peace with its neighbors when war is profitable for them and for the American corporations that aid money gets funneled back to.

There was an DDoS attack launched at the Estonian websites by Russians. Nobody was arrested (well, except one Estonian guy).

In the UK, you have people who are turned away from treatment because they smoke, or because they're fat, because the doc for whatever reason doesn't think they are worthy of treatment. Things that a regularly treated in the USA that adds decades to patients lives are death by natural causes in the UK. Everyone I have met in person that lived in the UK tells me horror stories about the system there. That link should put it into a little perspective for parts of their system.

The wait, it all depends on why you go to the hospital for. If your going to the emergency room for cold symptoms, you wil be waiting for a while because the more severe patients jump ahead of you. In the UK, the A&E visits are often walk in centers that are different from the emergency rooms in the US. They actually have walk in clinics that are specifically there as if you were to see your family doctor with an illness. It can take 1-2 weeks or longer but they claim the average is around 2 days to get an appointment with a regular doctor (the local surgery would be the local doctors office) if there are enough in the area.

The other option is to go to the walk in center which while it is attached to most Accident and Emergency rooms, it is actually a separate facility serviced by first come first served systems with a couple of appointments. So imagine a US emergency room with twice the staff, one devoted to emergencies and one devoted to general practice. What you see in the US is emergency only rooms handling general practice too which is a reason for the waits. In the US emergency rooms, all conditions more critical will take precedence over the less critical patients.

I was in an accident (in the US) back in 99 or so and my face was disfigured so bad that one eye popped out of the socket and my nose was less then three inches from my right ear and I had two busted ribs. X-rays showing my skull wasn't cracked open and me being awake meant the doctors left me there to talk to some candy stripper who was about to bust into tears while they not only took care of the other patients in the same accident, they fielded another accident where two patients were so critical that had to be flown by helicopter to another hospital about 20 miles away for specialized surgeries. About 3 or 4 hours later, they came back to me when another call squad came in, this time I was getting pissed and wanted to leave so they gave me some purple shit in my IV and I was out until 10 pm the next day. I was up for about 2 hours before I was prepped to have my nose fixed, my eye was taken care of the precious night.

There might be some incompetent Emergency rooms in the US, In the larger cities, there are usually several to chose from depending on your insurance, location, and how full they are. In my area, there is one which gets a bunch or people on the medical card looking for doctors excuses to cover their asses for calling off of work. We have treatment centers often run by the hospitals that staff doctors and nurses for general practitioner visits for walk in patients but they are usually separated from the ERs.

Read this article:

Let's recap why there's concern about his health: in October 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - which is usually a quick killer. But Jobs is extraordinarily lucky: he had neuroendocrine cancer, a rare and treatable form. He had the Whipple procedure (which removes the head of the pancreas, where the cancer was, and the duodenum, which connects the stomach to the jejunum) to treat it in July 2004 (having unsuccessfully tried to "treat" it through diet, a fact that was kept from
Apple shareholders beyond the board).

It's a shame how many of our rights are being curtailed in the name of "National Security".

As far as I've been able to ascertain from the article, Mr. Kerzic was standing in an area designated for use by the public. It does not appear to be a restricted area, and from what I can see from the photograph in the article, there are no signs warning against photography by the public.

However, as bad as we may think it is here in the United States (compared to the pre-9/11 world), things are much worse in the United Kingdom. The rights of the Individual in the UK are enshrined in Common Law (i.e., customary law passed down through the ages), and not explicitly delineated in any sort of constitutional document.

For example, in the US, we have a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the right against self-incrimination. A recent court case implies that this right includes encryption keys: If a law enforcement agency impounds your laptop for analysis, but can't get anything out of it because the contents have been encrypted, too bad for them. Handing over the encryption key would be a form of self-incrimination, so you don't have to do it.

On the other hand, laws, ordinances, and Police reactions regarding individual freedoms can and often do change at a whim, depending on what is expedient at the time (8th paragraph, about half-way down). In addition, since the right against self-incrimination is based on Common Law, and not written as an explicit right, ordinances like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act can easily curtail and eliminate such rights. As usual, some groups say that even these powers do not go far enough, invoking the familiar mantra of "National Security".

And these things are happening in two of the most "open and democratic" societies the world has ever seen...

And on a side-note, here's an interesting question: Who's standing in the "restricted" zone across the tracks taking the picture of the "public" train platform?

"A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal. Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away. Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma. "

It's unthinkable the way physically bombing a hospital is unthinkable. It doesn't mean somebody might not think to do it, just that you have to question the perpetrator's humanity if they were to actually go through with it.

How right you are.

Climate change may actually increase the probability of volcanic and earthquake activity!

See article below:

"The Earth fights back ..
Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters/

The scientific argument seems to be that the sea level rise due to climate change can actually trigger increase in volcanic activity. Hmmm....

Hard to believe, but the article below makes a scientifically plausible case for a link between global warming and increased earthquake and volcanic activity!

"The Earth fights back"
"Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters/

Climate change may actually increase the probability of volcanic and earthquake activity!

See article below:

"The Earth fights back ..
Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters/

About the same number of people are watching highlight "event" broadcasts as before - topping out at about 14 million (of about 60) in the UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/26/wallace-and-gromit-lead-bbc-to-christmas-ratings-victory

That's not a hugely different number to any time in the last 20 years. The death of broadcast TV has been greatly exaggerated.

Yeah, they don't like Israel, we get it. But I honestly think that most would

I would've asked for facts to back up this opinion, but it is unrelated to "hypocrisy" charge, so whatever...

It would've been, if "the rules" were unrelated (orthogonal). They aren't --

Someone else already pointed out the silliness of that argument.

No, they didn't: "Tell me, how does opposing the establishment of Israel incompatible with opposing its unlawful expansion or its treatment of Palestinians?"

The answer is very simple and was already given in this thread. Israel's enemy's reject the country's right to exist, and is actively working on ending this existence. That existence was brought about by, among other things, a UN resolution — the very first one on the subject of Israel. It is perfectly logical, clean, legal, and moral for Israel to pay no attention to subsequent UN-resolutions, which concern Israel's interaction with its enemies, until the said enemies accept that very first UN-resolution.

A particular aspect of Israel's policy over the decades of war may or may not be right. But UN-resolutions remain irrelevant to that, until, once again, Israel's enemies accept the very first one.

As long as you follow only the rules you want to, you have no right to insist that anyone else follow them, period.

That's childish nonsense. This is not a game, but a matter of life and death — for Israel. If the enemy wants you dead, you'd be an idiot to grant him any quarter. Israel's inhumanity is a sign of such idiocy, but they aren't totally crazy. Their enemy cares not for UN or similar bullshit — just look at what's happening in Sudan and Afghanistan, while the Arab League and other "respectable" enemies of Israel look the other way. Having lost "fair and square" on the battlefields of several wars in the 20th century, the Arab regimes are now trying to win with terrorism on one hand and propaganda on the other. Judging by your posts, they aren't doing so bad — despite being utterly and obviously insincere.

... but it seems quite one-sided.

Yeah, right. "One-sided" is bad, because everything has two (and equal) sides to it — or so your humanities professors told you, didn't they...

Well, sometimes, you know, life presents not "shades of gray", but a perfectly distinguishable contrast between evil black and honest white. Even if, after trying hard, you can find a spec of white on the black side, or some marring dust on the white side, it does not change the whole story. Israel's moral high ground is sky high. Unlike the enemies, they aren't out to kill anybody, they just wish to survive and prosper on their side of the border.

Do you think that most Europeans' (and others') views on this conflict are completely crazy, or just very misinformed?

Very large Arab and Muslim minorities in Europe vs. vocal and strong Jewish lobby in the US is what explains the differences in attitude. Neither is and indicator of truth in itself.

I'm not posting any more here. We are done with "hypocrisy" nonsense, and the larger conflict itself will settle only — as Golda Meyer predicted decades ago — "when the Arabs begin to love their children more than they hate ours ".

Hamas is the democratically elected government in Gaza. Hamas considers themselves at war with Israel, and Hamas is engaging in military rocket attacks on Israel.

Actually, from 18th June until 19th December 2008 there was a Gaza ceasefire which Hamas agreed to. The rocket attacks in that period were launched by other groups. Wikipedia says that the following groups also manufacture missiles and shoot them towards Israel: Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees, and Tanzim. During ceasefires Hamas asks the other groups to halt missile attacks. In that article, Abu Obieda, the top Hamas commander in the Gaza strip, said "To shoot rockets into Israel is not a goal of Hamas; it is not a real target. But when Israel attacks us, it is our only way to respond. We do not hope to kill people in Israel with these rockets but it's a necessary response." Apparently Islamic Jihad fire the most rockets in to Israel, and Hamas does not control them - there have been armed clashes between Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It's a tricky situation - Israel wants to undermine Hamas by destroying their power base and support through economic sanctions, and then encourage other groups to remove them from government, but at the same time Israel complains when Hamas doesn't have the power to prevent those other groups from firing missiles across the border.

The innocent-until proven guilty system, as well as other aspects of American criminal procedure, are just that - procedures, not substantive law - to protect the innocent. The US criminal justice system would rather let 10 guilty people go free than 1 innocent be convicted, since putting someone in a cage (or killing them, in rare cases) is a very serious thing. But innocent until proven guilty was never intended to prevent societal ostracization. That's what free thinking people do when they think someone is a bad person - just like your juvenile post tried to do with me.

This is fine, but keep in mind that this is why you should consider long and hard before even charging somebody. After all apparently looking guilty is enough to ruin your life.