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Sounds like a nice theory, but I don't believe it. If the goal is to prevent somebody from hogging a space all day, then a parking meter doesn't do the job; I can defeat the "goal" by feeding the meter. I think the real goal is often to gain revenue from both meter receipts and parking violation receipts. It's certainly worth big money in Milwaukee, my nearest big city; see this Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel article for recent coverage.

Also many states are required by their own laws to balance their budgets.

South Carolina, where I live now, is one of those states. For a while, we had a governor who didn't care and the state had a huge financial crisis. So we elected a governor with a reputation for being a penny pincher and, two years later, it looks like the budget is getting back on solid ground.

I'm originally from California, so I have some sympathy for the state, especially since most of my family lives there. We'll be done with our governor in 2010, and if things are still bad out there maybe you can borrow him for a few years. Just make sure you keep him well-supplied with grits and cheap khakis. Oh, and he may need a couple of live pigs if the state legislature gets out of hand.

For what it's worth, there's updates to the story.

It was more than suspicion...

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/nov04/274391.as p

Erp.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/nov04/273074.as p

TUESDAY, Nov. 2, 2004, 8:07 a.m. Police blotter: Slashed tires and spitting

The tires of at least 30 cars and vans rented by the Republican Party to carry voters to the polls were slashed, Milwaukee police said this morning. The discovery was made at 6:30 a.m., said Sgt. Mark Wroblewski.

The rental cars were parked near a GOP office in the 7100 block of W. Capitol Dr. Wroblewski said "at least" 30 cars were disabled. At least one tire was slashed and in some cases, all four tires were cut. Detectives were on the scene, the sergeant said. Police had no suspects in custody as of 8 a.m.

- source

Here you go:

Flyer distributed in African American neighborhoods in Milwaukee

Repubs challenge 37,180 registrations in Milwaukee (this is a new challenge, on top of the 5600 cases you cited)

Repub attempt to disenfranchise over 20,000 Ohioans thrown out of court (mentioned as similar strategy to Wisconsin item)

photo of fraudulent letter sent to Ohio democrats

West Virginia fraudulent phone calls

College republicans distribute false voting flyers at UW Madison

Voters get phone call claiming Kerry supports gay marriage (before you get on me about Schwarzkopf, that story's already been discredited. Apparently "someone" took a legitimate endorsement message from General McPeak, and spliced it to sound like Schwarzkopf made the endorsement)

Scan of flyer distributed in Jefferson Co., Alabama

Here's a bonus fraudulent letter sent to African American voters in South Carolina

God bless America, eh buddy?

We all know that the NFL really determines the outcome of the elections! And I gotta say, things are not looking up for King George at this point.

In Milwaukee, Kerry supporters forcibly occupied a GOP campaign HQ and disrupted all operations using a bullhorn.

In Cleveland the NAACP's National Voter Fund and "ACT Ohio" are under investigation for voter registration fraud prompting the local prosecutor to state "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level. I grew up in Chicago and this looks like the politics of Mayor Daley in the '50s and '60s."

Pro-democrat voter registration fraud in Racine, WI

Michigan

Florida

Denver and Minnesota are also locations of suspected fraud.

Want more?

Via name_withheld from SensibleErection:
Colorado
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Florida
Tennessee
Michigan
West Virginia
Wisconsin

In Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Wisconsin, some union members who hate the Republicans for cancelling their overtime pay rights occupied their local Republican campaign office.
A Gainesville Democrat punched a Bush cardboard cutout, which escalated into punching the local Republican chief.
The Knoxville shots remain a mystery - no connections to Democrats targeting Republicans have any factual basis.
In Madison, someone burned swastikas into a lawn with Bush/Cheney signs, without explanation.
In Duluth, a couple of teenagers graffiti'd a man's Bush/Cheney sign, and apologized, while explaining they're not Kerry supporters, either (they won't even be old enough to vote for President until 2008).

Hardly a pattern of organized Democratic Party targeting of Republicans, in the mold of shooting abortionists, though unacceptably uncivilized. More like a bunch of assholes in Florida and the Midwest boiling over at the power grab, and getting a little too physical when confronting the people they hate. Operation Rescue was organizing the shooting of doctors, crossing out their pictures in the target collection with red 'X's, and removing them after the assassination attempts had been executed. This comparison doesn't excuse these thugs, especially if the Knoxville shots turn out to have some political connection. But it's hardly grounds for saying that delegates nominating the Republican presidential candidate are targeted for assassination, Operation Rescue style, when activists publish their addresses after the RNC keeps them unprecedentedly secret.

Doesn't CmdrTaco have a personal blog somewhere to bash Bush instead of doing so on what was once a good news site?

Not only are the quotes out of context, but they are used in error. Furthermore, congress hasn't declared war since WWII, so it's hard to pretend that Bush doesn't have any precedent if he did go in without approval. Of course, there was approval so this whole "news story" is a farce. Way to go and pull a Dan Rather. At least he finally had to apologize.

No, it is not a living document. It is a legal document. The rights it represents are God given, not changable as to the whims of men. They need to be preserved at all costs.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar01/scalia140 31301a.asp

The time of the post on your website says "posted September 089, 2004 at 09:36 am." The oldest story I can find using Google's news service is The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online which does indeed give you credit. (and Google says the story is 12 hours old.)

Every news article after that (9 hours old or newer) cites the TV Week article, and the TV Week article only cites "sources."

Usually the writer of a particular article will have his name and e-mail address or telephone number. You should contact them and demonstrate that TV Week got the information from you and didn't give you credit for it. I've found them for the most part to be pretty agreeable.

• KDDI in Japan uses CDMA as their primary standard.
• DoCoMo has just begun using WCDMA on some of their networks, but still primarly uses the PDC standard
• Vodafone made a very large bid for AT&T Wireless, and they went to bed thinking that they successfully bought ATTWS. However, Cingular made one last bid, thus outbidding Vodafone. Vodafone's relationship with Verizon did not prevent them from bidding.

I'm a loyal fan of Rayovac which has seven plants and at #3 makes about 20% of consumer batteries.

Hello everybody, this is my first post. I use to live in Milwaukee and I didn't like the remodel they done. The section in the library where the computer books where is now the book sorting place when they get returned.
I spent many hours standing (no chairs) in this small section of the library never getting bothered except the few who would walk down to use the rest room.
This section was the d. d. s. classification 000 generalities to some UFO books. COMPUTER BOOKS! Reading about my old Atari 800XL and 6502 Assembly Language Programming.
Anyways here is a link and a slice
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1557/4886667.ht ml "Katie Nelson, head of the audiovisual section at the Frank L. Weyenberg Library in Mequon, said the consensus there is that the companies ``emptied their vaults.'' Nelson said there was even mold growing on some of the 520 CDs received there, and less than half the shipment will be used."

Mold growing on some of the CDs, now that's funny!

http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/jul04/245182.asp? format=print "Of the 646 CDs that Menomonee Falls received, many will be placed in circulation, including music from Johnny Cash, Wynonna Judd and Louis Armstrong, Schall said. A few pop gems such as OutKast's "Stankonia" and recordings from Cat Stevens and Otis Redding are also likely to be hot items, Gay said."

I know there will be a few "late fees"!

B.A.

There's more info at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Among the quotes: 'She said there was even mold growing on a few of the 520 CDs received in Mequon - a five-disk 1999 set titled "Respect: A Century of Women in Music." ... It was disappointing because we could have actually used that one'. As a Milwaukee resident I know I'll be running to the library to check a few of these out. :P

I suppose that since PC isn't explicitly in the text, it could be interpreted that way, but my assumption would be that the 4th ammendment still applies. Do other statutes regarding the issuance of warrants explicitly address PC?

You mean like the physical search warrant part of the FISA, which is two subchapterss back in the Code? Yes, it does explicitly require probable cause. In fact, it has a whole section about the necessary judicial review, as opposed to the mere subordinate clause that the PATRIOT act uses.

I haven't heard this. In fact, the only thing I've heard about this process have been statements from Ashcroft himself, where he rebuts criticisms that the PATRIOT Act allows DoJ to run around without any oversight.

Of course he does. But while he says that out of one mouth, he sticks his tougne out of the other.

After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs.

Do you really think you can keep everyone believing that lie until the election? That's hardly the only headline like that, and the Kerry campaign has to comeup with some awfully convaluted metrics to portray otherwise.

If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.

Who's interested in having American workers sacrifice anything? See the article I linked to above. There's plenty of good work that can't be shipped overseas because foreign workforces simply aren't up to the task, skills or education wise.

And how will it help a damn thing to redistribute income in this country, at least anymore than it already has? I don't know about other people, but I work hard so I'm rewarded. If I don't get the fruits of my labor, why should I work hard at all? If the government took more and more of my money as my paycheck increased, that would greatly lessen my motivation to increase it. Work twice as hard for only 1/4 more pay after your wealth redistribution scheme takes the rest?

I don't think so. Self interest is a rather simple instinct, and making the most of that drive is how America got to be top dog in the first place. You propose to kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.

Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada.
Their socialized health care systems are swirling down the drains of decay since they implemented the system you think is so wonderful. When you seperate the decision to pay for services so far from the decision to seek services, you raise demand while restricting supply, and everything goes to shit. Really, look into it. Socialized health care is an abject failure.

As for education, we already subsidize education here, and you know how that's working out. We've got HS kids who can't do trig, and college kids who waste all their time studying failed ideologies and advocating silly political causes instead of studying a worthwhile subject that will make them more valuable to the workforce.

Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. How about just elimanating social security over the next few decades before the system implodes? The financial future of SS is grim.

Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Back to my previous point. If the government takes all or most of the increase people get from working harder, they won't have any reason to do so.

The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom. Spoken like someone who's never taken an economics class, or even put the slightest bit of thought into the matter.

Have you ever stopped to consider how even those who rate as 'poor' in the united states typically have a TV, plenty to eat (obesity is the number one health problem of the poor), and a car? How the 100+ million people today who qualify as middle class live in comfort royalty didn't have 150 years ago, even though there was but the tiniest fraction of them?

If the rich must steal from the poor to get richer, WHERE THE FUCK DID WE STEAL all that money from? Who do I steal money from, now that I've graduated college and earn 7 times what I did while in college? Who does Bill Gates steal money from, because even though he's the richest man in the US, the poor haven't gotten worse at all in the decades since microsoft started- and he's made plenty of millionares with him at said company.

Answer: I create wealth, I don't steal it. Bill Gates created a tremendous amount of wealth, and he kept a good portion of it. I make electricity so factories can use it to make

I was about to disagree with you, but fortunately at the last minute I actually checked instead of vomiting my raw opinions upon the intarweb as fact. I thought former presidents were normally still referred to *directly* as "Mr. President". They're not. But, oddly, apparently Carter and Clinton can still be referred to as "Governor".

My problem with thin clients comes from the fact that too much power resides with the one who controls the servers.

Imagine if you will, our world 15 or 20 years from now. Let's also imagine that in this future computing moves exclusively to thin clients/big servers. If the government or a large corporation doesn't like the idea of people doing something (political dissent, bad product reviews, unprofitable exercise of fair use rights) all they have to do is convince (legislate, sue, buy out) the one who controls the central server.

If we're all on thin clients and the "computing service providor" of the future decided that we shouldn't be speaking ill of the current president, it won't be hard at all to shut down ALL such dissent.

Think it sounds a little paranoid? So what. I don't care. Recent history bears this out. For example, how many people here know that initially there were reports coming out of Columbine were that a 3rd gunman was lead away in handcuffs?

How about 20/20 investigation that came up with proof that the Justice Department's Executive Secretatiat's Office was recieved a call informing them that "The Oklahoma federal building has just been bombed!", 24 minutes before the explosion.

Consolidation of power makes it easier to quash. On a large scale, Thin Clients could be a very bad thing.

LK

MU students voted more than once, survey finds

In Milwaukee, the stoplights are fitted with an infrared system where the stoplight recognizes the approaching ambulance/fire truck and turns green for it. Other communities are looking into similar devices.

If an anti-speeding system was installed, it would obviously be overridden by the emergency vehicle system.

Read the last paragraph on that article you linked to. I ask you, Slashdotters, is there *not* a great election conspiracy afoot? :-)

Of course, there were only around 6000 votes in the first place..

Yes, going to the moon would be nice and if we mine it for hydrogen-3 it will also be profitable.

Also, the article says:

His design is only producing a tenth of what he calculates its potential power output could be.

and

... 51 kilowatts on the waste from 100,000 people

So...does that mean he'll get half a megawatt from the crap of 100,000 people after it's perfected?

Use smurf tube!

Instead of confining yourself to what's available right now, have your contractor run conduit through the walls for all your wiring except electricity. That will make it easier to swap out your cat5 for fiber or pull your POTS line when you go to VOIP.

I don't think anyone has any respect for these class-action lawsuits. Why do they still go on?

Money is why we won't get reform as long as Democrats have the power to prevent it.

Not back when the law was written. But really, kids have common sense, theyre not gonna sit there and make calls in the middle of a lesson durring class, and if they are stupid enough to do that then yeah, they should be confiscated. I had mine confiscated when i was calling for a ride after school. My mom had to come get it, the vice principal explained to her that it was a saftey issue because they could be this. I refrained from calling bullshit on him then and there because he said he'd seen one, he implied in person at his previous, hellhole, of a school, not on the news, because your average high school thug is not going to have secret agent type tech. And this kinda turned into a rant, i have a personal beef with the guy, but thats another story...

A loser pays rule would make these kind of lawsuits very risky for the plaintiff. "I'll sue" would cease to be a meaningful threat.

Money is why we won't get reform as long as Democrats have the power to prevent it.

...with our insatiable appetite for bargain prices. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal just had an excellent article on this subject. One item to note from the article is how Wal-mart ran a "Buy American" campaign through the 1980's, and now, if Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner, ahead of Britain and Russia. Kiss your American job goodbye!

...with our insatiable appetite for bargain prices. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal just had an excellent article on this subject. One item to note from the article is how Wal-mart ran a "Buy American" campaign through the 1980's, and now, if Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner, ahead of Britain and Russia. Kiss your American job goodbye!

(standard disclaimer: born and raised 18 years in green bay, wi, so I am permitted to make fun of my hometown)

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec03/191454.as p

Actually, in the US product placement on television is prohibited under the FCC sponsorship identification requirements of 47 U.S.C. 317 and 508, and 47 C.F.R. 73.1211. My wife used to be Director of Marketing of a well known consumer goods manufacturer. She says that back in her day TV placement for gratis product was already common, but the shows didn't even ask for money, probably more because it devalued advertising slots than because they were afraid of the FCC. Apparently this is no longer the case.

Indeed it doesn't seem to be the case any more.

Over the summer, NBC ran a reality show called "The Restaraunt". This show was blatantly paid for by American Express, Coors, and Mitsubishi -- products from these companies would be gratuitously dropped into the show every few minutes, and most / all of the commercials were from these three names. But don't take my word for it.

The show got reasonably good ratings, which was fantastic for NBC: reality shows, with their convenient lack of professional writers & actors, are already much cheaper than traditional shows. Getting some companies to foot the relatively small bill just made it an even better deal for them. Even if the ratings were bad, the show would probably have been profitable, but the fact that it was successful meant that it's likely to be a trendsetter.

And indeed, this year's season of "24" is sponsored by Ford as a promotion for one of their trucks. Tonight's episode was bracketed by two extended length (five minute or so) commercials for Ford, the show was prefixed by a pitch for the product by Keifer Sutherland, and the truck showed up in the episode itself -- as, I'm sure, it will for the rest of the year.

I wasn't aware of the law you cite, but something has clearly changed in recent months. One widely cited reason for the shift is the rise of commercial-skipping video recorders like the Tivo -- you may be able to skip the commercial breaks, but if the sponsorship is part of the show itself then it's a lot harder to avoid. Did the FCC rules change, or is this just some kind of corporate civil disobedience, flouting the law knowing that Michael Powell's FCC is unlikely to do anything to stop them? I don't know, but it would be illuminative to find out if the Ralph Nader suit you cite goes anywhere. Chances are, nowhere, but we'll see...

And if you read enough articles, you'd know that what he said last week was plenty accurate and his assessment was more accurate than many that supposedly "know football." But keep carrying that liberal banner way up high if it makes you feel better about yourself. Just don't be surprised when others give you about the same credibility as we give Rob Enderle.

Reading articles about the GTA lawsuit and the Everquest, it outrages me on how little responsibility the parents take for the actions of their children and how little they hold their children accountible for their own actions. The Everquest mom let her son play the game and he was 21 years old. The GTA parents let their kids play a game that was rated for adults.

Many people like to point the finger at other things besides themselves. Outside forces caused them to do it. The sad fact of reality is that we live in the outside world. There are things beyond our control that may try to influence (drugs, crime, moral decay). We can control ourselves and not be influenced by them.

Many people will say that these games are beyond anything previously experienced. They point to all sorts of studies on how games influence violence. Evil is as old as time itself. There is a very old book. It has tales of patricide, matricide, murder, rape, incest, polygamy, adultery--every ill we know. It's called the Bible. How come none of these parents ever sued the church because it is a bad influence? Because if the silliness of it would get the lawsuit tossed out of court in a heartbeat.

Article here. Its a step up from jizz mopper though.

Great point about newspapers, they're an industry that has rapidly embraced the digital age. With my new wireless setup, every morning i can sit down at the breakfast table with my laptop, check my e-mail, read the news, read my local news, and even read the comics that would come with the pulp and ink morning roll. I'm sure i'll apreciate this situation even more come winter when i can spare myself going out on the porch in my boxers(i live in WI *shiver*). Newspapers already make most of their money from advertising, the internet just saves them on materials and distribution.

A country that uses proprietary, closed-source software is a country that is not free. A country that uses proprietary, closed-source software is partly under control of the seller of the software and of government of the country in which the seller is located.

Why is it that the government of Brazil is quicker than the government of the United States to realize the necessity of running a government with open source software?

To understand this, it may help to understand other differences between Brazil and the United States. One country is more primitive in some ways and less developed than the other. For example:

The United States government has bombed 24 countries in the years since the second world war. The Brazilian government has bombed none.

The United States government supports culture. It has an organization called the National Endowment for the Arts. Apparently that is the group that puts on those unbelievably boring shows in the U.S. capitol. The Brazilian government supports culture. The culture minister, Gilberto Gil, is a musician and singer who is famous throughout the world.

Officials of a large city in one country visited the officials of another country to learn how to run a city in a more humanistic way: Officials of the city of New York visited the officials of Curitiba, Brazil, to learn the mayor's methods for making a city an enjoyable place to live.

Brazilians are generally slim and good-looking. Americans are the most overweight populace that has ever existed. This seems to be because the Brazilians are more skilled at making themselves happy than Americans. Definitely Americans eat when they are not hungry, and indication of unhappiness.

The city of Rio de Janeiro has a reputation for violence. The homicide rate is 43 per 100,000 people. The city of Washington, D.C, the capitol of the United States, does not have a reputation for violence. The homicide rate in Washington, D.C. is approximately 77 per 100,000 population, close to double that of Rio.

The United States government has powerful organizations that operate in an almost completely secret way as a world-wide police force, forcing U.S. government ideas and culture on other countries. For example, there is the NSA, CIA, and FBI, and some agencies whose existence is almost a secret from U.S. citizens. The Brazilian government is far from perfect, but it has nothing comparable.

The Brazilian culture is far from perfect. For example, Brazilians generally don't like to plan, so things that require planning are often done poorly. But in the areas above and in other areas, things are better in Brazil.

Your forgot an important fact about Brazil: They have the coolest Culture Minister of the World!

incomplete skulls may be able to be fixed... like here and here

another related link

Taking into consideration that Milwaukee is a city of ~600,000 people, that not many are going to have wireless laptops and even fewer are gonna spend time in a park surfing the web, it still seems like 20-40 users clogging a public WI-FI is a bit odd.

I suppose they can't complain, though, since the city paid less than a couple of hundred dollars for the setup. Still, it just seems somewhat pointless if it's gonna be clogged all the time.

Taking into consideration that Milwaukee is a city of ~600,000 people, that not many are going to have wireless laptops and even fewer are gonna spend time in a park surfing the web, it still seems like 20-40 users clogging a public WI-FI is a bit odd.

I suppose they can't complain, though, since the city paid less than a couple of hundred dollars for the setup. Still, it just seems somewhat pointless if it's gonna be clogged all the time.

The genius who built a multimillion-dollar software company known worldwide for its pioneering "zip" files had died of acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism.

Bizarre, I get pancreatic bleeding whenever I read any of John Katz's old articles.

Wonder if they are related.

On the other hand, I have this diabolical urge to snicker when I think of some Harry Knowles-clone bawling his eyes out when he loses his +5 Muu-Muu of Sloth. I've played MMORPGs and I've never been THAT attached to a bunch of data.

...is how the machines took control. :)

Think we may be seeing more of this kinda crap is it comes out?
=Smidge=