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Rather than making themselves community sites to attract the eyeballs that would generate revenue, so many online sites treat the internet like a cash register. On-line advertisements should have been as dirt cheap (or free) as Craigslist since printing costs don't warrant what most charge for on-line ads.

Also, so many on-line newspapers haven't figured out how to create a good front page. Check out my home paper's site. You're bombarded by so much data and links that you simply can't take in everything you're seeing (thus you ignore most of it).

Newspapers just failed to figure out the internet which is why so many are disappearing.

What would happen to a politician that challenged the media? They would be torn apart in the press.

Palin, anyone? But why would the media support Obama at all costs? Why, did Pelosi promise the media a new Shield Law? Or is it that Obama is outspending McCain 3 to 1? Elections sure is good for bid'ness.

More than you think, perhaps.

We can't carry large amounts of cash overseas. It's illegal: if you don't declare it, then when they find it during the strip searches, you're a terrorist or drug dealer and they confiscate it. If you do declare it, you're a terrorist or drug dealer and they confiscate it before the strip search.

Yes, I'm exaggerating, but not by as much as you think. It is illegal to take large amounts of cash out of the country without declaring it, and the government (usually local cops) will confiscate any large stashes of cash they find. They claim it's drug money, and charge the money with a crime. You have to prove that the money is innocent to get it back (scroll down to the bottom of that link).

No, I am not making any of that up.

So, you can carry travelers checks, you can carry your Visa, but you're taking a big risk if you carry cash. The really dangerous criminals are the ones in the uniforms.

Ashcroft and his wife, Janet, declined to dance even at his inaugural gala as Missouri governor, upholding his church's stance on dancing.

On the night before he joined the U.S. Senate in early 1995, Ashcroft knelt in a Washington home and allowed family and close friends to anoint him in oil and lay their hands on him in prayer. The ritual dates to the anointing of ancient kings of Israel.

There are also stories of him asking judges to annoint him with oil when he got into a new position... weird stuff. He's just an all around nut.

Have anything to back that up?

Here's another. And another. And another. Just look for "oil" on the page.

I've been following this for a couple of years now, the article in Discover is pretty good.

Here's a link from The KC Star from 2001: kcstar.com

Well, are we talking about computer science or about software engineering. To my thinking, these are about as similar as physics and electrical engineering.

Systems Engineering is really just a superset of Software Engineering, but in the end both are primarily concerned with how *all* of the bits and pieces fit together properly, not on the details. The systems engineers are the ringleaders of the other engineers, they don't always know how to make each piece work, as they focus on making sure the completed pieces work together as they should.

Think of them more like Civil Engineers. You don't see any Civil Engineers out there pouring concrete or hammering a timber structure together, but they make sure that the tradesmen that do these things do them to the right specs, lest you end up with this.

Truth be told, there are entirely too few Systems Engineering and Software Engineering programs out there considering the demand for them.

Human effects on bridges is hardly a surprise. Recall in 1981 when the Kansas City Hyatt's skywalk collapsed, killing 114, because the pedestrians were dancing (and the design was altered to ease construction). You'd think that would have been enough of a wake up call to the millenium designers to consider human motion.

The Hyatt's skywalk collapsed soley because of the change in design. The design change caused the walkway to fail to meet building code. Some civil engineers who studied the disaster were surprised it could support its own weight, much less the weight of the pedestrians.

Quoting from a Kansas City Star article.

The National Bureau of Standards concluded failure was just a matter of time. "The walkways," its probe found, "had only minimal capacity to resist their own weight."

The dancing people were by and large on the floor below the skywalk, participating in a dance contest.

The mistake that caused the Hyatt disaster was not one of failing to consider human motion in the design, but failing to consider the effects of seemingly minor changes in design.

Still, while ION may or may not have been a technically superior offering to BWG, what killed it was the whole acquisition process (Prof. Walters would love that sentence). I remember at this big Sprint rally "Getting It Done", ION people were up on stage talking about how things had been improving with regards to the order process. They'd refactored the ordering process and it now only took somewhere along the lines of an hour to get service ordered instead the multiple hours it used to take. I can't remember how many screens they said they cut out and redundant information elminated but it was a lot. An hour just to get service ordered. Granted I waited nearly that long to talk water turned on here but it's Kansas City Water Department, what can you expect? That's not an hour's worth of wait time, that's an hour long conversation. So, now as you wrap up your phone call with ION, they tell you can expect your service in the next 60 to 90 days. I believe they said they had cut it down to 45 days but still, that's a long assed time to be waiting for service.

Contrast that with the online ordering of broadband service, much faster truck rolls and quite frankly a hell of a lot more business (iirc BWG's weekly numbers approximated ION's monthly enrollment). The major flaws of the wireless service were line of sight (which was to be a non-issue with 2G technology) and the whole spectrum licensing issue (1 license per market). BTW, a bad question to ask when you start working was "If this is so cool, why don't we have it here (World Headquarters)?" Apparently, MCI/WorldCom has this market. Ahhh, delicious irony.
For a local version of the announcement try the Kansas City Star

/glad I didn't convert

I'm a graduate from a US university, and am currently back in my own country. I had a chat with my (former) boss in the US a couple of hours ago, and although this may be generalizing it a bit, but from what he says the current sentiment of the common man is that of retribution and retaliation. Especially amongst the highly patriotic, and it's tough not to be patriotic in times like these.

My fear is that the general public, with emotions on full throttle, may tend to overlook the fact that not all muslim people think the same way as Osama bin Laden. Being a muslim myself, I am of the opinion that the senseless taking of countless lives is not something to be proud of.

There are already cases of this scapegoating and finger-pointing taking place. This is in Kansas City, as far removed from NY as you can get. So imagine what the muslim community in NY, who in and amongst themselves MAY have friends and family who are victims of the attack, may be facing.

I just hope this doesn't bring about a new rash of racism and hate-mongering among the population.

I honestly don't quite know what to say. Yeah, it is bad at Kent State for these guys, but this whole "Remember Columbine!" crap is spreading like wildfire.

Today during lunch the TV was on one of the local "news" stations, WDAF. I use that word "news" lightly - they spend most of the time doing stories about skiing squirrels.

Their lead story was this. And of course they (along with the KC Star article I linked to) mentioned how "Columbine like" this was. WDAF TV went a step further though by mentioning that "police found three black trench coats"!

sigh.

The Catholics. They are what the CO$ aspire to be.

What are priest doing in their spare time?

Link to KC Star article: http://www.kcsta r.com/item/pages/home.pat,local/37749141.627,.html

See The Kansas City Star for a better report.

Religion and anything that can be interpreted as in opposition to most common religions have always been very difficult subjects to teach because so many parents have objections to whatever might be said. It is on these grounds that religion has been eliminated from public schools. It sounds as if Kansas is removing evolution from the curriculum on the very same grounds--not based on whether evolution is correct or not. If this is their platform, they should be able to defeat the Americans United for Separation of Church and State... that is if they actually go to court.

Obviously they do not intend to teach religion either. Thus they are leaving the teaching of our origins entirely to the parents. In places where evolution vs. Christianity is a hot topic, this may be a good solution.