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How is this not an act of war?

It is an act of war, just as killing people in other countries is war. But: we just don't talk much about it if it is done by countries that we like, or do a lot of business with; or even if done by our own country.

I had a run-in with this sort of crap when I was younger.

I worked in a grocery store in my teen and college years. They required all employees to join the UFCW ("United Food and Commercial Workers", for those that don't want to bother googling it). The initiation dues were basically the entire first paycheck ($50), but you got half of it back if you went to the UFCW orientation meeting that was held every few weeks. I went to the orientation. I never got my $25 back. Then they milked about $2 a week out of me for the few years I worked there. I received precisely squat in return.

After I had moved on from that job, the local union boss "retired and did not resign" and ended up being sentenced to house arrest for lying to a federal agent at the Department of Labor.

The grocery store and the union were both run by a bunch of absolute scumbags. The sooner the company goes out of business and the union is broken, the better.

It's not in this list, because it only goes back two years, but it made newspaper headlines when a SWAT team in South Carolina got themselves an M113A1 with an MG turret back in 2008. It was also on the 1033 program, so we should see it there once they get more data (their FOIA request goes all the way back to 2001).

Of course, maybe there are more there, and on that list, but it's hard to tell because they don't list models. E.g. what is "ONLY COMPLETE COMBAT/ASSAULT/TACTICAL WHEELED VEHICLES"? or "MINE RESISTANT VEHICLE"? And I don't think that the MG would have a separate line item if it's mounted in standard configuration...

On a side note, try searching for "MACHINE GUN" in the list.

"How did Microsoft squander the lead they had with the Windows CE devices? They had a great lead, they were years ahead. And they completely blew it. And they completely blew it because of the bureaucracy." ref

They didn't, they could have been way ahead of the curve, when they joined the Tron consortium, but not totally owning it, they acted to supress it in the US while promoting the much inferior WinCE. A replay of the WinNT - OS/2 collaboration/war with IBM.

'Microsoft Teams Up with Japanese Group That Promotes Archrival Tron'

'Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would collaborate with a consortium that promotes an open operating system for consumer electronics called TRON'

'Microsoft Corp., which was the first U. S. supplier to lobby Washington about TRON'

'We don't want the Japanese to create a specification that would preclude competition,', former Deputy U. S. Trade Representative Michael B. Smith

At least they aren't planning on landing (yet).... If there's no life before we land a spacecraft on the Europa, there will be afterwards.

We should probably become better at sterilizing our spacecraft before we land one on a moon where water is known to exist, and seed its oceans with earth-based life.

you know, that kind of philosophical statement needs to answer the question why the fuck would that be a problem, what do you know about how they're going to sterilize and do you propose we sterilize this planet first? and how would we know if we have sterilized well enough?

At least they aren't planning on landing (yet).... If there's no life before we land a spacecraft on the Europa, there will be afterwards.

We should probably become better at sterilizing our spacecraft before we land one on a moon where water is known to exist, and seed its oceans with earth-based life.

Now for lasers:
Sentencing is all over the map, but 2.5 years is not outrageous here.

Lets compare it to kids sentenced for throwing rocks at cars. We will see that it is all over the map as far as sentencing goes.

5 years 1 person injured
Probation+Restitution
Probation 1 child seriously injured

i would say the probation people got off way too easy. Though most of the articles I found were of people being killed, most of those were murder charges and life-sentences. Very few articles about non-fatal events. It makes me wonder if non-injury rock throwings are even investigated at all.

Because the trend is to turn us into either unemployed, or independent contractors, or temporary workers. An independent contractor can work for lower than minimum wage so the minimum wage doesn't matter when not everyone is paid in wages.

Nonsense for two reasons: McDonalds can't hire Bob as an independent contractor, pay him less than minimum wage, and then tell him what to wear and when to work. Because then he's not an independent contractor, he's an employee.

So McDonalds hires a burger-flipping staffing agency to be Bob's direct employer...well the agency still has to pay Bob a minimum wage. And you can only use such temporary labor for so long until you run into problems with the Department of Labor. Because then you're again treating your temp as an employee.

They are still mass murders that happened with machetes, but hey, for your sake, since you are google disabled:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/9190732/Hungarian-man-kills-four-members-of-his-family-with-large-machete-after-row.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiguan_kindergarten_attack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_school_massacre
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/190923522.html?dids=190923522:190923522&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=OCT+22%2C+1921&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post&desc=KILLS+11+AND+ENDS+OWN+LIFE&pqatl=google
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-71884392.html
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LME-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=bkwMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5902%2C7437434
While these aren't in the US, it would be incredibly stupid to think that mass murders won't happen if guns aren't present. The biggest mass murder in the US was done with a fertilizer bomb FFS.

Dude, you gotta learn to use Google:

1 go to www.google.com

2 type in "forced ranking intel"

3 3 read the top 10 results in the first page.

The are :

http://american-business.org/383-forced-ranking-systems.html

http://www.faceintel.com/discharge.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZT57xSrPJ5YC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=intel+forced+ranking&source=bl&ots=BWTYfQm01x&sig=O61ae4i3pKexc_C5-yyCf5hVXdw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j5d5UIyhM83ryAHc4oHACw&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=intel%20forced%20ranking&f=false

http://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/business-and-administrative-studies/despite-the-fact-that-intel-has-become-the-most-successful-company-in-the-microprocessor-industry-with-90-percent-market-share-it-still-has-some-problems-one-example-of.html

http://www.sibson.com/publications/perspectives/Volume_11_Issue_2/e_article000162170.cfm

http://business.highbeam.com/137618/article-1G1-116862343/forced-ranking-good-bad-and-alternative-one-out-five

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-01-08/the-struggle-to-measure-performance

http://books.google.com/books?id=9G1F5ymrYQgC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=intel+forced+ranking&source=bl&ots=C_Yp3z06bj&sig=Ioi8YTP1sHT4H2utqbAqo84Gu0E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j5d5UIyhM83ryAHc4oHACw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=intel%20forced%20ranking&f=false

http://www.halogensoftware.com/resources/reference-library/profiling-or-stack-ranking.php

and so on and so forth

---> BIGGEST. FAIL. EVAH.

YOU WIN!!! You WIN!!!!

Jack, what do we have for the guy who can't Google?

Well Dave, we have a free lobotomy followed up with an all expenses paid five weeks recovery in beauuutiful downtown DEEEEE-TROIT! !

Wow that's great jack.. well it's like the old saying .. those who already have, only get more!!!

Thanks for playing "I Post On Slashdot!!!"

The anti-terror guys have warned us for years that a microwave cannon could be built with parts ordered from the web, capable of frying a plane's electronics when it tries to land.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-196971883.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1166499/Terrorists-bring-jumbo-jet-using-microwave-cannon-built-internet.html

So I guess Mythbusters didn't get an authorization to test that either.

some claim (I'm not about to pay to read the article) that Linux is being used more. ISTR something about Solaris being taken up more in banking too, but that was long ago, before the Oracle buyout. Nobody with half a fucking brain is even considering putting Sun equipment into their infrastructure if they don't already have some.

It's the COBOL conversion guy and academic hanger-on, Vivek Wadhwa, mouthing off again. He just wants to see his name in print. It's sometimes claimed he was on the faculty at Harvard (he's not, he was just an RA) and now he has some vague affiliation with Stanford he's touting.

Found it. It's the photo used on the cover of Fatboy Slim's album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, which was found to infringe on Ernst Haas photo Sunset Silhouette.

Details on the lawsuit here: http://business.highbeam.com/2025/article-1G1-93613520/getty-collects-fatboy-slim-infringement

Bundle in MagnaRAM with Firefox.

Have you ever seen a man attack a women physically even once? I lose count of the number of times I've seen it the other way around and I doubt your experience is different. It's just that we don't classify women-on-man violence as violence. A slap is the typical example - it's violence when a man does it and not violence when a woman does it. Violence from both genders is directed at men far more than at women. The reason you are confused on this issue is that violence against women is considered to be a more serious matter than violence against men, so the discussion is always about violence against women even though it's much rarer. Here's a great example of that:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-13906762.html
This story makes it out to be a travesty that women are now more than half as likely to be assaulted as a man is. It carefully avoids the fact that men are still more at risk than women. I can't be bothered to find the real data on this as I forgot the url, but here's something for you to read: (the numbers in there are too low because men don't report when they are abused) http://www.oregoncounseling.org/Handouts/DomesticViolenceMen.htm

As for men wanting young women and women preferring same age partners, I don't know what rock you must have been living under to not know that, but here's some data:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/

What?? There's already been enough fireworks already.

April Fools Day 1991, Hercules Titan IV blows up test facility at Edwards Air Force Base - http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-29/news/mn-2539_1_air-force-officials
August 1993 - Hercules Titan IV blows up after launch at Vandenberg - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-958781.html
August 1998 - Hercules Titan IV explodes during Spy Satellite Launch at Cape Kennedy - http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1998/08/202l-081398-idx.html

Thiokol - SRM Failure in Cold Weather destroys Challenger - we don't need to go into that do we?

October 1994 - ATK acquires Hercules - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ALLIANT+TECHSYSTEMS+SIGNS+DEFINITIVE+AGREEMENT+TO+ACQUIRE+HERCULES...-a015870549
February 2001 - ATK acquires Thiokol - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69838505.html

What?? There's already been enough fireworks already.

April Fools Day 1991, Hercules Titan IV blows up test facility at Edwards Air Force Base - http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-29/news/mn-2539_1_air-force-officials
August 1993 - Hercules Titan IV blows up after launch at Vandenberg - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-958781.html
August 1998 - Hercules Titan IV explodes during Spy Satellite Launch at Cape Kennedy - http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1998/08/202l-081398-idx.html

Thiokol - SRM Failure in Cold Weather destroys Challenger - we don't need to go into that do we?

October 1994 - ATK acquires Hercules - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ALLIANT+TECHSYSTEMS+SIGNS+DEFINITIVE+AGREEMENT+TO+ACQUIRE+HERCULES...-a015870549
February 2001 - ATK acquires Thiokol - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69838505.html

Actually there are generally not many low-skilled jobs out there.. they slowly dissappear.
There was a research project in the 90's called "The midwest Job Gap". It's basic conclusion was there were 2-4 low-skill workers (for various reasons, these people aren't going to learn their way up to high skill jobs) for every 1 low skill job.

Here's an old reference to it: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4404804.html

The premise that there is enough work to go around for low skill workers is generally false.

I'm proud to live in a country that takes due process very seriously

Really? I don't know about Britain but you can't mean the US. I already mentioned a US admin support for the Indonesian invasion of a sovereign nation, East Timor, in which 200,000 were massacred. CIA supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, as well as his repressive rule. How about Reagan's support of The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations. Operation Northwoods was a proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terror against US citizens in the US and blame Cuba for them. COINTELPRO was a group of actions taken by the FBI against political groups to discredit and disrupt them. The CIA's Family Jewels: "Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents". Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban airliner brought down by terrorists, Cubans who the CIA paid as agents. The Libertarian, Individual Liberties, and Free Markets Institute CATO has the report Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record it answers in the affirmative.

And let's not forget what the US has done to American Indians. Even though the Cherokee had treaty rights in the Carolinas and Georgia, President Andrew Jackson ordered the military he commanded to force the Cherokee to march on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma after gold was found. The US broke one treaty after another signed with the Sioux, forcing them unto smaller and smaller reservations. There was the Forced sterilization of Native American Indian women through the 1970's.

If I dig some more I can find a lot more I bet. So don't go saying the US "runs a pretty tight ship".

Falcon

You're right about the absence of significant suppression letting the number grow. But unless I'm wrong, at least half of terrorist fatalities are due to suicide attacks. I think it would be unrealistic to say that suicide attack would scale to the point that the statistic would become more significant than it is.

I also have a difficult time imagining non-suicide attacks perpetrated on airplanes coming from one or more passengers. There are hijacks, but they are usually for ransom, not for non-suicide terrorism.

Finally, nobody is saying that we should abandon all measures: just stop the useless harassment. Or in my case, stop pushing the government toward such absurd measures for fear of something so unlikely to kill myself.

> If bandwidth there was so amazingly cheap every
> hotel would have amazing service.

Hotels don't have the same deals because
* customer and business market show a big price difference. Hotels are seen as ISP when they resell access.
* hotels don't see it necessary to have free/cheap internet to be attractive
* they outsource the infrastructure/service and the pricing is thus made by the third parties. Think telecom companies. And Telecom companies suck.

One reason Internet is cheap in France is that there was competition (in part thanks to Free). Mobile phone prices are high (because of price collusions during many years with the main actors - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-139542623.html).

This is hopefully going to change as Free enters the telecom market in ~2 years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-10/13/c_13554298.htm

Not necessarily. Retail PC's have some of the smallest profit margins, much of the bloat you see is there because its one of the few ways they can still get money (through the bloat providers). HP is no different that the majority of mainstream manufacturers. If you go to your local Best Buy, and pull the side of the case of a random sampling of machines, you will find that the only difference between most of them is the case. Internals tend to come from the same Chinese manufacturers owned by the same Japanese companies filled with investors from the same globalist corporations. Singling out HP in your "sucks" rant is a bit unfair, because these practices tend to be SOP for the majority of PC manufacturers.

My advice. If you have any inkling of hardware knowledge, download the PC Gamer Building Bible, get out your Phillips, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. And if your doing the "family support" thing, reformat their machine for them with a clean OS install, setup a back-up routine, and install some LogMeIn free. Your headaches will slowly go away.

A side anecdote, when I used to work at Circuit City, our managers would push us to sell an "Optimization Service" on brand new desktops and laptops, a service whose sole purpose was to remove the 3rd party bloat. I have never clicked uninstall more in my life (except for times I accidentally allowed an apple software update, sorry fanbois but dammit if they wont try to install their Bonjour, Itunes, and QuickTime on every machine on the planet to the grave.).

Dubya actually did pretty well by the Texas Rangers

He traded Sammy Sosa. Nuff said.

No one's ever managed to win a case by claiming that source code has violated a patent, but I don't know of any name where that was shot down offhand. I'm not sure any case has made it before a court without being immediately shot down, it's such an obviously wrong interpretation of the law.

If the source code did count as a machine implementing the process, a hell of a lot of patents would be in trouble, as they included that source code...and thus, apparently, handed out infinite copies of their patented machines, which anyone can now use without paying license fees. (If a patent holder gives you a device that can do a patented thing, they are implicitly giving you a license to use that patent when using that device.)

Just as importantly, as this article points out, you run into some very weird issues if source code violates the patent.

In other words, if the courts ever try to make source code count as a device under patent law, they'd actually blow up software patent law itself.

Man, this is a big deal. It's a tragedy that we haven't heard about this in the news before. It seems like the kind of thing Slashdot would have reported on years ago.

The FCC calls for all US-registered spacecraft to be disposed of at the end of its useful life. This means either decay into the atmosphere within a specific amount of time (25 years, I think) or placement into a "disposal" orbit. For geosynchronous spacecraft, that disposal orbit is one slightly higher, getting it out of the way of operational spacecraft.

"Do you think that the world would be a better place if the only thing we valued was manual labor? If any public knowledge was worthless (in a financial sense) knowledge?"

This is a false dichotomy. Just because knowledge itself is free, does not mean its creation is free. In some cases, even distribution may not be free, even without copyright (think about university tuition).

And I personally do believe that the world would be a significantly better place without copyright. Not only would it remove the arbitrary barriers to knowledge which we see in absurdly overpriced textbooks and other informative resources (which drive up the cost of becoming skilled labor in the first place), but it would also truly encourage free expression. As it stands, creating just about anything without the permission of the copyright lobby in that field (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft/Apple, etc) puts you at serious personal risk, no matter what your intentions were. We JUST SAW how this works, with Jobs threatening an open codec for no reason other than it runs counter to the interests of the moneyed, patent-owning businesses. I'll give more examples, to try to shove it into your closed little mind just how our system actually works. Remember SCO? How much money did lawsuits filed by SCO cost businesses like Novell and IBM, which could have otherwise been funding actual development and real contribution to society with that money? What did we gain out of those lawsuits as a society? How much did they cost tax payers in court, money which could have gone to health care, education, or any number of actually beneficial expenditures?

I won't even mention the lawsuits which literally destroy the lives of families for no reason other than music piracy. I will talk about is how even internal disputes between copyright owners bleed us. Ever hear of the lawsuit between the Beastie Boys and James Newton? One must wonder what we gained from that!

How many times do these things have to happen before copyright apologists like you get a clue? The sooner we destroy "intellectual property," the sooner we can return to actually encouraging creative, social, and scientific advancement.

According to TFA, the patent in question is US Patent No. 5,825,352. According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, Steven Bisset and Bernard Kasser are the sole inventors (filed 1996) of the multi-touch tech - and Logitech was the assignee as of 1998.

According to this link, Elan was launched to do semiconductor R&D in 1994, per http://www.computex.biz/elan/

SO - unless Elan bought this Logitech something's terribly wrong with the article. Can anyone help me with this?

Elan is winning local awards, see - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-200983370.html

but the idea that they themselves invented the tech on the patent in question is not accurate. Here's their list of their achievements - http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/about_elan1_3.asp

I'm a little confused here. Nothing wrong with selling technology and if Logitech did that, fine - but this sure seems like there's a lot more to this than "Apple rips off Taiwanese firm" - in my opinion.

And and AND, Disney has made significant efforts elsewhere to stomp out unauthorized derivative work, and at considerable expense to them. If some unlicensed merchandise is flying under their radar, I can only conjecture that it's because either a) that merchandise exists below the economic scale/scope threshold of what it's cost-effective to hire lawyers to hunt down, or b) Disney, like Microsoft, has figured out that strategic, selective non-enforcement of their intellectual property can actually serve their interests, sometimes creating new markets for their products which wouldn't otherwise have existed.

Geoworks demonstrated this on the San Francisco local news back in 2000.

Check out:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-66096362.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-66915753.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-66096362.html

Arthur Andersen (the Accounting Firm) spawned Andersen Consulting nearly 20 years before the Enron mess.

You're right. I confused the parent ("Arthur Anderson") with its spinoff ("Anderson Consulting"). Whoop-de-doo. I conflated the virtually identical names of two closely-tied business units, both of whom worked with Enron during the period of accounting crimes leading to scandal and subsequent implosion (source).

Andersen Consulting was completely separate

Arthur Anderson's consulting division did not even split until 1989- only twelve years (not 20) before the DISCOVERY of Enron's crimes, and existed in partnership with Arthur Anderson (the accounting firm), not becoming fully-independent companies until after arbitration involving the Chamber of Commerce which concluded in August, 2000. (source) So they weren't "completely separate" during the period when the mess was occuring at all.

and had changed their name years previous to that mess as well..

Wrong again. The name change to "Accenture" occurred in January 2001 while ENRON was committing crimes. Again, the name change was January 2001. ENRON did not go bankrupt until late 2001. So yeah, they managed to change their names months, not years, before the mess was publicly discovered, but not before it happened.

. but don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

A "rant"?! Please. For crying out loud, I was making a point about companies rebranding to names that start with the letter "A".

Grow up.

W

Google doesn't ask Indian Police for justification. All it takes is an email request, and these IP addresses could be in USA!

A common reason India Cyber Crime cops ask for IP addresses is "cyber defamation"... and India has Criminal Defamation laws still in the books.
(Despite the original land of their laws changing with the times: United Kingdom: Defamation Decriminalised)

In 2005, a Singapore company eSys won the 2005 Ernst and Young award, rubbed shoulders with the elite, launched a Foundation and so on.

Things became more noteworthy when eSys used Indian Police Cyber Crime cell to fight their cyber-defamation ... and by 2009, it was clear that there was some serious fraud at eSys.

Mumbai Police even ordered an American to delete a Cartoon... did they need an excuse to do that ?

So if Indian Police can get IP address records from USA simply by asking, why not FBI ?

Wazu is known for being quite the party campus...

Wazoo (or Wazzu, or WSU) is Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington, in the east of the state. Besides beer-drinking, it was also known for being a suspect in the notorious Wazoo/Wazzu Virus that plagued the world in the 1990s.

Western Washington University is, surprisingly, to the west of the state. I know they were doing some fantastic work with rotary engines in ancient days, but I don't know what the clowns are doing now.

Who the hell modded this as flamebait? Go look for yourself: http://www.ratical.org/renewables/

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-157158690.html

http://www.stemergy.com/news/press/?id=42

The people that mod this as flamebait are the same people that are the reason hemp and other alternatives will never see the light of day.

"...They are likely..."? I believe that a closer reading of TFA would show that m$'s privacy was considered, not yours. I believe that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson could debate this with you on point. m$ has gone to extreme lengths to disenfranchise itself with its roots; Windows 3.1 vs. OS/2 was a long time ago.

After the passing of the Patriot Act, I heavily invested in companies that made soft comfortable office chairs that sold to Law Enforcement; it was an excellent decision.

Intel delivered the first sub-40nm flash memory and has delivered two generations of top-flight solid state drives. Intel has always been strong in flash memory.

It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture [...] already contains live data.

Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...

For benchmark, this source reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.

In 2007 they were afraid of a famine blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).

"Saudi Arabia has led OPEC through the largest supply cut in its history to boost oil prices to the level publicly favored by Saudi King Abdullah, $75 a barrel." http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-09/09/content_8669671.htm

"Back in December, the blog analysed statements by King Abdullah, and concluded that Saudi Arabia had a 'target range' for oil prices of $75 - 100/bbl. Yesterday, this analysis was confirmed by Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, who said the world economy could now 'weather oil prices at $75 - 80/bbl'." http://www.icis.com/blogs/chemicals-and-the-economy/2009/05/saudi-confirms-75bbl-oil-price.html

"Saudi Arabia on Saturday cited $75 a barrel as a "fair price" for oil, the first time in years that the world's biggest exporter has identifed a target for crude prices.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said oil prices needed to return to $75 to keep the more expensive new projects at the margins of world supply on track. His comments may come as a relief to consumer nations fearful of a return to $100-plus oil." http://www.cnbc.com/id/27967401

"Big Asian oil consumers India and Japan gave a cool response to Saudi Arabia's suggestion that $75 a barrel was a "fair" price for oil, saying cheaper crude was preferable during the worst economic crisis in generations." http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-191062480.html

"At a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) over the weekend, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah reportedly said the "fair price" for petroleum is $75 per barrel." http://www.autoobserver.com/2008/12/saudi-king-suddenly-hopeful-for-75-oil-us-too.html

Can it change? Sure, and it has in the past, but it's pretty apparent that they've seen something in the $75 price point for a good while now.

nice to interact with you in english, the language of international business, and therefore, the language that every school in the world puts some sort of emphasis on

http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm

do you think we still would be first touristic destination if we dropped our cultural identity ? and for what ?(cultural irrelevancy my ass, as if culture could ever be irrelevant) and please we do not need to fight to retain our culture, it sustain itself on its own pretty good imo

the japanese have been pretty busy studying, incorporating, and adapting western ways for over a century, and there is no such thing as no japanese culture. in fact, its pretty easy to identify japanese culture, and japanese culture is very strong in its own right

the value and strength of a culture is derived in fact from this cross pollination with other cultures. meanwhile, if you isolate or protect a culture, you weaken the culture

culture stands on its own, it requires no support, regardless of how INSECURE the people of that culture are:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-184761138.html

I wonder if the camera is sensitive enough to see the classroom overcrowding, herpes under the skirts of sorority sisters, and traces of cocaine on the Homeland Security majors' noses!

^ Look harder. ^

Yes, a country without guns... That most be HORRIBLE!? There can be no high school shootings when there's no access to guns!

Yes, you're right. That's exactly why kitchen knives et al should be banned as well! Will someone please think of the children?!? http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/12/2568031.htm
http://www.pomsinoz.com/forum/news-gossip-chat/26459-stabbing-mountain-creek-high-school.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-42523133.html

A gun is a tool exactly like a knife is a tool, except of course for those who gleefully eat meat and yet seriously have no idea where it comes from.

Driving can be a particularly difficult subject area because it's generally governed by different state laws. Another problem is intentional actions verses unintentional actions and reckless verses careless defining the difference between an accident and assault in most cases. However, in general, the owner of the vehicle is the primary resource of liability and damages recovery and in some states like mine, it's encoded in law (except with rentals and leases then it's the contracting party).

Anyways, there are mitigating circumstances here that should be discussed. For one, the different states have different state laws but it could be possible that neither you or the company was issued a citation because the cop couldn't determine actual wrong doing. An example of this is where two cars on a country road with no center line collide and both drivers claim the other person cross the center of the road. Often neither driver is cited unless skid marks or witnesses can clearly show one person was in the wrong with the other in the right. But both drivers or vehicle owners would be responsible for the damages to the other vehicles (insurance requirements). Now if the cop couldn't show that you were speeding, driving recklessly, failed to obey some law or whatever, Lets say there was an oil slick at the intersection causing you to lose traction on what would otherwise be a normal and legal drive or perhaps you looked away and got distracted for a split second before it was too late to stop, you could have been spared the citation. Some states even limit liability when no personal injury has happened to just repair or replacement of the vehicle. Some states automatically require the Pizza shop to purchase and maintain insurance on all it's delivery drivers regardless of who owns the vehicle. The liability you didn't see was most likely already covered by the insurance.

Now also, if the company pays the damages, the liability is gone. The injured are not entitled to twice the damages because two parties might be liable. They are entitled to just the legal damages however it can be collected. Most states hold the company liable for damages from actions of the employee. This is a legal concept known as Respondeat superior (let the master answer). However, if the company folds before paying the damages, you can be included in the liability from your actions. It just happens that you weren't needed to be in your scenario.

Here are a few examples of where drivers- while driving company trucks, have been held personally liable for their actions. Not all of them are from America but it's a common thing around the world. Those are some pretty serious offenses where more then property damage happened. I know of two truck drivers in the US who were in accidents and one wasn't cited or sued or anything because it was someone else' fault. The other one ended up losing a lawsuit for over 2 million dollars and spent 18 months in jail because he was doing 20 MPH over the speed limit and someone died in the accident. Of course he doesn't have the 2.something million dollars, and his wife got the house several years before that.

(the name means "emperor")

Well, actually, a 'Gesture' can be a weapon in a robbery. Case in point, (sorry, I couldn't find a non-pay/subscribe news source for this one, but here is the page I got the following quote from): http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5755384.html

The Utah Supreme Court has concluded that sticking up a store with one's finger in a pocket can constitute aggravated robbery if the victim truly believes the store is being held up with a dangerous weapon.

In two separate rulings issued Friday, the court ruled that using a "gesture" to indicate a concealed weapon that convinces a victim it is "likely to cause death or serious bodily injury" can be considered aggravated robbery.

In the rulings, the justices noted that ample case law supports that a "representation" of a dangerous weapon can constitute aggravated robbery, even if no real weapon was involved.

William Joseph Ireland had argued his actions did not deserve a five-to-life prison ...

Isn't it nice how it is the impression of the "victim" that can make another person rot in jail for an entire lifetime because they did something stupid with their finger. Even though no actual harm was caused?

See, that's what's so beautiful about it. Obama actually follows the law to some degree(Though I wish he'd ignore more of the court precedent for letting the government stretch the constitution, that's not really something I'd expect to see from any president besides Ron Paul).

I shudder to think about how long the gun wielding folks in Bush's town hall meetings would last before being sent by Cheney's secret police to the secret torture centres in Europe.

As for your proof, Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job, and Article: Sheehan arrested before Bush address: Woman was wearing protest T-shirt under clothing that she revealed upon taking her seat and further, Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign

I lean liberterian/right since I tend to side with Ron Paul on economic issues and thus I tend to be against the Federal government meddling in social issues at all for better or worse. Regardless, despite the flaws, Obama's administration is such a step above what we've seen for the past 8 years, you literally can't compare the two. Allowing people to do something they're legally allowed to do without bending the law to arrest them anyway(despite such people being a clear and present danger to the well-being of the president) is just one good example.

When we were living in caves, and a baby was born with a major physical or mental defect, that baby was not able, or even permitted, to survive.

Like this one?. Or these one?

never seen in any device...

It's hard to get hard data of what chipset is
in what product. However, it was all over the tech news last winter that Samsung went with Broadcom chipsets for the BD players...

BD players from samsung:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-190874810.html

a chinese OEM:
http://www.bikudo.com/product_search/details/118262/blu_ray_disc_player_sbd5102.html

and 2 wire...

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS125072+06-Jan-2009+PRN20090106

There are undoubtedly others.

STB's originated when TV's were analog, electro-mechanical devices. when stuff was analog, fixed function and hard-coded, so to speak, they made sense. These days, when everything has a microprocessor in it already, it's hard to see the added value, for the consumer, of an extra box, with an extra power supply, containing an extra processor, requiring an extra remote control, just to run some software that could run on the tv anyways.

From a technical perspective, the STB function is a software one, that could run on an arbitrary CPU. It would be cheaper for the consumer to run it on an existing cpu that is needed anyways, the one in the tv. For example, folks are supposed to be able to get air-Cards from the cable provider to make virtual STB's in their TV's.

I don't want a PVR, and sling box, and a NAS, and a disk player, and a VCR, and a computer, and some weirdo video switching between them. I don't disagree that boxes can be made to meet all these functions. One can do all these functions in software instead, with practically no hardware. It would be cheaper once we got there. It would be better to have fewer connections, fewer protocols, and far more flexibility. All these gizmos are going to have encoding/decoding h/w anyways, that's most of what they do. Using a general purpose network lets us easily add flexible control layers that would require heavy duty investments to do in an application specific way, and so would never be economically viable. I gave some examples of the sorts of things that would be possible, they would probably emerge over time. With an application specific standard, there is no room for that, you have to bake it in from day 1.

Today, I have five computers and two televisions, and I view tv shows on any screen that is handy. for my purposes, I need a PC beside any television. That bugs me, because I know that there is a perfectly decent processor in there, usually running Linux. A TV should be a display device, with the ability to accept a number of inputs, and select a sub-set of them to display at any given time, or even all of them. Cheaper ones could be able to work with 1 input, a little more, for 2 inputs, 4 inputs, resolution, 1080i, 1080p, etc... There is plenty of room for product differentiation.

The flexibility from an IP interface is way better over the long term. That's why you see the surveillance cameras going IP at source, why you see professionals transforming raw output into compressed video on the camera itself, etc... It is happenning slowly, I just wish it would hurry up.

And bear in mind, that no nuclear fission power station turns a profit. Not one.

How about this one?

Point well taken. Yeah do like Ireland did! Whoring themselves out to multinationals has worked out *perfectly* for them.

Multinational corporations are quick to use the competitive advantages to use as a bargaining chip. As in my earlier example, Intel.

http://www.intel.com/community/ireland/index.htm Intel does have a manufacturing plant there.

Along those lines, many people missed the Redmond giant is building a new headquarters.. If taxes get bad, they are not locked into the US tax the evil corporations.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-132007757.html They also see the lets get the evil corporations and their overseas tax havens. I hope the current administration gets a clue before world economic reality hits them in the forehead after they close the US operations.