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(Last time I checked, Pokemon still continues to dominate sales charts while Halo 3/ODST, CoD:WaW/MW2 and Killzone 2/Resistance 2/Uncharted 2 have either disappeared or come crashing down from near/first place.)

Modern Warfare 2 Sales.

Yes, truly, hardcore games are not selling well. Sure, the industry might be having some troubles but I don't see the industry surviving without hardcore games. Casual games are a legitimate viable market but rarely do you see the record breaking sales in casual games.

funny how stories tend to come in packs. The Movie "Unthinkable" was ranked #3 at IMDB prior to the release of the DVD/BR (it was a straight to video release). The producer ended up asking on the IMDB forums the people who had rated it where they got it from and about ideas on how to make things fairer for both sides.
As someone who saw it ~early~ too, I can only urge you to watch it (if possible through a legal rental or by buying the DVD or BR ... it IS worth it), as it is a really interesting movie.
I wonder whether this and TFS are linked somehow.

Like this, you mean:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/11/the-boycott-eff.html

The government is already picking which form of energy succeeds, in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies to the petroleum industry. But of course, since you're against "socialism", you've been speaking out against oil for years, right?

Gates is just asking for a level(er) playing field for alt energy, which frankly has no long-term downside.

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Holdings Outperforming S&P 500 Handily
It is also overweight Healthcare, Consumer Staples and Industrials. The Foundation is underweight Telecom, Consumer Discretionary and Energy, and it has a 0% weight in Technology, Utilities and Materials.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Owns Over 7 Million Shares of BP

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Buys CSX Corp., M&T Bank Corp., XTO Energy Inc. Mcdonald's, Devon Energy Corp., Sells Johnson & Johnson
These are the top 5 holdings of Bill Gates

      1. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-B) - 1,251,250 shares, 48.36% of the total portfolio
      2. McDonald's Corp. (MCD) - 6,867,500 shares, 5.27% of the total portfolio
      3. Canadian National Railway Company Fully (CNI) - 8,399,653 shares, 4.82% of the total portfolio
      4. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) - 4,285,000 shares, 4% of the total portfolio
      5. Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) - 6,128,000 shares, 3.74% of the total portfolio

Is this a philanthropic venture or a tax evasion investment scheme?

I do commend Gates for what he is doing but I would not go so far as to slobber all over him for his philanthropic works considering his past illicit activity that played a significant role in providing him with the funds to become a philanthropist.

They do test, but the window period can be as high as three months with plain ELISA, down to a month if you spend extra for Western blot, and that means that when someone comes out positive, all his/her partners within that period have to be tested as well as their respective partners. It happened in 2004 (5 infected) and 2009 (16 infected).

Back on topic: I haven't gotten anything from the web *ever*, perhaps for the simple discipline of not authorizing ActiveX components, applets and other gimmicks.

But that's me; I guess less computer-literate *and* porn hungry guys make easier targets - "Yes, Ok, Yes, show me the movies already!".

None of what you've said has anything to do with Arizona.

Read the bill. The OP made an ignorant comment implying that Arizona SB-1070h (House Engrossed) has something to do with looking Latino. You've furthered that ignorance by giving out misinformation in regard to identity. To be honest, it took me a while to figure out why everyone was so riled up about this. As it turns out, the people inciting the masses were pointing to a draft bill, Arizona SB-1070s (Senate Engrossed). Further evidence of that is given by simply googling SB-1070. You won't find the actual bill -- you'll just find the draft bill. The draft bill was an egregious violation of anything anyone, other than perhaps a Latino dictator, might want to think of as civil liberties. I would tag it "POS". As such, it wasn't passed into law. The House version of the bill did pass. It had extension revisions to ensure that Gestapo tactics weren't being passed into law. Since then, it has had additional revisions to clarify "legal contact" because people weren't satisfied that the Supreme Court's decisions regarding "Terry Stops" were being spelled out. Well, that's probably not true: in all likelihood, they hadn't read the correct bill, but I digress. The main point is that any ambiguity was (hopefully) clarified.

Again. Read the bill. ANY government issued identification is proof of citizenship in the eyes of Arizona. Don't mix the US Federal Government in with this -- they're the ones with the onerous requirements. If you want to criticize, put it where it belongs: the Federal Government. Attacking Arizona for having a more lenient law than the Feds is silly.

Finally, if after having read the actual bill, you're still not convinced, consider this: the Obama administration is fighting Arizona on two fronts.

1. They're challenging Arizona's ability to prevent employers from hiring illegals. This law was signed by the current Secretary of Homeland Security. Yes, I know. It's an "untrusted source" in these parts (the evil Fox News), but find a link telling me they aren't challenging the law before you bitch about the source.
2. The Justice Department is challenging the law "because it impinges on the federal government's authority to police the nation's borders..."

Now, where in the Obama Administration's attacks does the Bill of Rights appear? Answer: nowhere. That's pretty much the proof in the pudding. If the law had any conflict with the Bill of Rights, they'd be all over it. It would be the easy path. Instead, they "acted stupidly" by reacting to this without any facts and, in the light of day, are finding any path they can to attack, regardless of how thin that path may be.

No it wont. Not unless you commute more than two hours each way, and run pandora on the highest quality setting.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/06/pandora-iphone.html

Any device capable of streaming Pandora also has an mp3 player built in. Use that.

I wonder how it will compare with the Exxon Valdez when it goes to trial?

But the prosecution is going to have to find something to "blame" this on other than a drunk...

According to this http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/24/business/fi-tvwatching24, which cites a Nielsen report saying that the average American watches about 5 hours/day of TV. That's larger than your stated count, but it's 'average', so by definition not "hardcore".

Miranda rights exist because of abusive cops.

How timely. Miranda rights are going away, because of Right-wing judges.

Supreme Court backs off strict enforcement of Miranda rights

The Gates foundation exists to spread Western IP law. I propose that it is part of the back-room deals surrounding Ashcroft letting Gates and Microsoft off the hook completely after Microsoft was found to be guilty of abusing their monopoly. If you want immunizations you have to provide IP law protection for pharmaceutical companies in your country. Further, The Gates Foundation makes for-profit investment in corporations literally killing the same people they are immunizing; when this article was published the foundation published a press release on their website saying they would review their investments for ethical content, but literally a day later they published another that essentially said that they were not going to do that because it would be difficult. This can safely be summarized as Bill Gates crying crocodile tears while saying "Saving the world is hard."

I was trying to figure out what Toyota gets out of this. They have everything they need to build their own EVs. The Prius has electrical components for everything, it is nearly an EV already and they have had the Rav4 EV, and the FCHV test bed platforms. There is nothing in technology that they really need Tesla for.

But I think I know what they get out of this: ZEV credits in California. 50 Million is pocket change compared to the cost of bringing their own new EV to market. This lets them cover their ZEV requirements in California on the cheap if they don't really believe a full EV is practical (money making) for them at this time.

The actual California State pages on ZEV program seem to be down for me right now, but this is what I am talking about:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/28/business/fi-zev28

"Under the new standards, passed unanimously, the board will require the largest companies selling cars in the state to produce 7,500 electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for sale, lease or loan in California from 2012 to 2014 -- down from the 25,000 required in the period under the previous rules.

In addition, carmakers will be called upon to make about 58,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the same period. The previous regulation, passed in 2003, made no provisions for plug-in hybrids because they were not considered viable at the time."

I like how the feds, and now many states, disallow searches of the DNA database to find false positives. Hundreds were found before this line of research was shut down. From a LA Times story in 2008 "State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people. The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white. In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches -- each seeming to defy impossible odds."....

"We always said that once the Internet took off, we'd be OK," he added. "It never crossed our minds that we'd be competing with people who just give it away for free."

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/10/business/fi-ct-porn10/2

The author didn't state it elegantly, but he still made the point -- Chinese industrial espionage is very real, is here now, and it is state-sponsored. China views hacking not only as a fast-track to becoming an industrial superpower, but they view it as a method of becoming a military superpower, too. A good part of China's military buildup involves locating and training talented young people, as well as hiring the already established hacker-underground folk for military purposes. They figure (probably correctly) that they are nowhere near capable of competing with the US military on a technological front, but if they can shut down our command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) networks (not coincidentally, this is also why they developed the satellite-killing missile), then they have essentially shut us down, especially for any military response to an attack on Taiwan.

Here are just a few examples of the many, many already known about cases of Chinese espionage.
- The infamous Cox Report (regarding the PRC stealing our most advanced nuclear weapon designs)
- The well-known Google attacks
- A Boeing engineer was sentenced to 15 years for espionage, selling rocket technology to the PRC
- The FBI caught an American with very high security clearance and a Taiwanese-American selling classified information about weapon-sales to Taiwan to the PRC.
- The British MI5 released a report detailing all kinds of Chinese espionage. For example, high-profile UK businessmen have been approached by PRC spies with lavish gifts which include USB flash drives infected with trojans to steal information, and in 2008, an aide to Gordon Brown had his Blackberry stolen after a sexy Chinese woman approached him in Beijing -- a classic, almost too classic to be true, Soviet-style tactic. Other diplomats, too, have been sexually blackmailed by the PRC to divulge information.
- Here is a research paper by Northrop Grumman regarding China's cyber-warfare abilities, 88 pages filled with the stuff. Turn to page 67 for a "Timeline of Significant Chinese Related Cyber Events 1999-Present," let alone the details of the rest of the paper which shows the large effort by the PRC to improve their cyber-warfare and espionage abilities.

Here are some more excerpts:

MI5 Report

The MI5 report described how China’s computer hacking campaign had attacked British defense, energy, communications and manufacturing companies, as well as public relations companies and international law firms. The document explicitly warned British executives dealing with China against so-called honey trap methods in which it said the Chinese tried to cultivate personal relationships, “often using lavish hospitality and flattery,” either within China or abroad.

“Chinese intelligence services have also been known to exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships and illegal activities to pressurize individuals to cooperate with them,” it warned. “Hotel rooms in major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai which have been frequented by foreigners are likely to be bugged. Hotel rooms have been searched while the occupants are out of the room.”

In that case, the only thing standing between freedom and tyranny is a handful of managers personal opinions.

Yeah, you've never heard the phrase "Tyranny of the minority" have you? Tyranny is when people tell others how to live, what rules to live by.

A set of shops, even a community deciding by mutual agreement they don't want something is not tyranny. It only becomes tyranny when things are mandated.

And we have many such mutually dicided laws in place, and yet, you don't consider it tyranny (or perhaps you do). I can't build a factory in a residential neighborhood. I can't put a gun shop next the the local school. Is that tyranny?

Real tyranny are found in things like MANDATED HEALTH INSURANCE. But I rather think that many people here will realize what I'm really saying. But hey, just let Woody Allen speak for all the crazy lefties out there ...

It would be good...if (Obama) could be dictator for a few years

And you think Ann Coulter is scary?

Oh what utter baloney. One bird and is not a mass of birds. And 3 meters of coastline is not an environmental catastrophe.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/no_oil_spill_landfall_through.html

They don't even know if the so-called "plumes" are actually oil. Let alone if the oxygen depletion is real.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-noaa-skeptical-of-oil-plume-reports.html

And the business you fed me about brown pelican nesting? Again false.

"Nesting for the eastern brown pelican, in the Southeast Region, is generally confined to the Carolinas, Florida, Louisiana, and the Caribbean. "

It is not exclusive to the Gulf like you are trying to portray.

The researchers don't even know that what they measured was oil.

Asper later e-mailed Los Angeles Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim, who had interviewed him Sunday in Cocodrie, La.:

        1) We are not 100% sure that the plumes are oil. We have NOT analyzed the samples yet and won't know what's in them until we do. That will take at least a few days or even a week or more and we don't want to rush these results. The sensor we used is not definitive for oil and other compounds do respond in a manner that is similar to oil and could be confusing us.

Anyone interested in journalistic responsibility (and the lack thereof)on this story should read this article:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-noaa-skeptical-of-oil-plume-reports.html

An expert in fluid mechanics from Purdue, Steve Wereley: "I spent a couple of hours this afternoon analyzing the video, and the number I get is 70,000 barrels a day coming out of that pipe," said a Purdue University mechanical engineering professor, who used video footage and a particle velocity analysis to come up with that 70,000 barrel per day amount. That is around 3,000,000 gallons per day. Still less than the quoted original article, but closer to a linear, not exponential difference. I stand by my previous comment.

There's been a trend towards parking meters and parking stations that take credit cards.

Since I really don't want to bother reading 59 pages just to get the answer to this question, does it address how Limewire "encouraged" people to download copyrighted material

From the LA Times:

Relying on the Supreme Court's ruling in MGM v Grokster, Wood held that the defendants deliberately induced LimeWire users to violate copyrights, and that it profited from the infringements. Here's a snippet from the ruling (Wood refers to the company LimeWire by the initials LW):

[T]he following factors, taken together, establish that LW intended to encourage infringement by distributing LimeWire: (1) LW's awareness of substantial infringement by users; (2) LW's efforts to attract infringing users; (3) LW's efforts to enable and assist users to commit infringement; (4) LW's dependence on infringing use for the success of its business; and (5) LW's failure to mitigate infringing activities.

Most of those factors are non-controversial applications of the Grokster principle that folks who encourage piracy in order to profit from it are liable for infringement. Wood cited internal documents to show that LimeWire executives knew most of its users were downloading songs illegally, and that they sought out such users through, among other things, "press campaigns on college campuses relating to 'file-sharing and getting free MP3's.' " The company aids would-be infringers, Wood wrote, by enabling them to search by categories (such as Classic Rock and Top 40) that "inevitably guide users to copyrighted recordings." She also noted that the more users it attracts, the more revenue it collects from advertisers and consumers who buy the ad-free version of the software.

Wood's fifth factor, however, suggests that liability might ensue merely from the way a technology is designed and used. According to Wood, LimeWire built a filter into the software that could block copyrighted works from being downloaded, but left it inoperative unless users turned it on. A separate filter, however, barred users from sharing the songs they bought from the LimeWire store.

This selective filtering further demonstrates LW's knowledge of infringement-mitigating technologies and the company's intentional decision not to employ any such technologies in a way that meaningfully deters LimeWire users' infringing activities....

Failure to utilize existing technology to create meaningful barriers against infringement is a strong indicator of intent to foster infringement.

As for former CEO Gorton, Wood cited precedents that held company executives liable for infringements when they had the ability to supervise them and they benefited from them. She went on to note:

Gorton directed and approved many aspects of LimeWire's design and development. Gorton admits that he conceived of LimeWire and decided that the program should be decentralized and should use P2P technology.... Gorton oversaw the development of LimeWire's filtering system, and decided that the filter should be turned "off" by default.... This evidence, taken together, also establishes that Gorton knew about the infringement being committed through LimeWire.

Another win for the RIAA

What, her stance on fabricating evidence to wrongfully imprison people wasn't "tech" enough for you? That's some nerd stuff right there.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/05/nation/la-na-court-framed5-2010jan05
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/the-infallible-prosecutor
http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2009/3mer/1ami/2008-1065.mer.ami.html

You don't know how to use google or bing do you?

Google - "prosecutor manufactures evidence kagan"

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/05/nation/la-na-court-framed5-2010jan05
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/the-infallible-prosecutor
http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2009/3mer/1ami/2008-1065.mer.ami.html

Update - apparently it's not done http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100509,0,1038312.story . The original article wasn't about space development it was about the utterly useless endeavor to put people and equipment on mars.

Near earth satellites that provide a useful return, fabulous. Commercializing trips into orbit, much more fabulous. Other projects that create value and generate returns, much more faubous

Sending people to Mars at this point totally useless ridiculous waste of money.

major electronic markets including Nasdaq and NYSE Arca announced they would cancel stock trades that occurred between 11:40 a.m. PDT and noon PDT if the prices were 60% higher or lower than the last price quoted at 11:40 a.m.

From the LA Times.

but it's predicted to hit land in the next 3 days as winds turn unfavorable.

There have been daily predictions of imminent landfall since the leak started. Here is one from back in April. Pardon me if projections 3 days out are taken with some degree of skepticism.

And talking about "evidence of damage" as if present damage is all that matters and the future need not be considered is retarded.

My point is that there have been predictions of immediate massive catastrophe for two weeks now. Hasn't happened. In the mean time the slick has actually started DECREASING in size due to various remediation actions.

Do you understand that the gulf coast is an important breeding area for the pelican?

Important for Brown Pelicans living in that area. The world-wide population of the Brown Pelican is around 650,000 and it is distributed throughout coastal areas of both North and South America. It is not endangered or at risk as a species by this oil spill. The article you linked is very much missing a lot of information. In fact this bird disappeared completely from Louisiana once before and came back.

The fact that it's globs and not a continuous stream, and that despite 2,000 barrels a day being leaked there are not oil slicks visible by satellite, puts the lie to the idea that the natural seepage and this disaster are in any way comparable.

Here is a study of a natural seep in California that totally refutes your statement.

http://www.physorg.com/news161440137.html

Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact? If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt.

BP claims absolute responsibility for oil cleanup:

"The British oil giant BP LLC, whose deep-water well is gushing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico, said Monday that it was "absolutely responsible" for stopping the leak, cleaning up the oil and any resulting environmental damage."

Third-party estimates put it at around $15 billion so far.

On the note of your Slashdot embarrassment, The quote in that ad comes from here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/19/opinion/oe-ehrenstein19

In case you were wondering.

Halliburton was responsible for cementing the deepwater drill hole that evidently failed, triggering the explosion that toppled the huge offshore rig and unleashed the gusher.
from Gulf disaster spurs questions on drilling, Halliburton

also this more detailed article from the L.A. Times:

Investigators delving into the possible cause of the massive gulf oil spill are focusing on the role of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the giant energy services company, which was responsible for cementing the drill into place below the water. The company acknowledged Friday that it had completed the final cementing of the oil well and pipe just 20 hours before the blowout last week.

<here be snippage>

Cementing a deep-water drilling operation is a process fraught with danger. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period -- more than equipment malfunction. Halliburton has been accused of a poor cement job in the case of a major blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia last August. An investigation is underway.

According to experts cited in Friday's Wall St. Journal, the timing of last week's cement job in relation to the explosion -- only 20 hours beforehand, and the history of cement problems in other blowouts "point to it as a possible culprit." Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer, told the Journal, "The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement."
from Gulf oil spill: The Halliburton connection

So it does seem premature to lay this at the feet of British Petroleum. From what I've been reading, BP has done quite a bit of late to reduce their accident rates and otherwise improve their business model.

One of the problems is that the US and Britain do not have as strong requirements as other countries for deep water drilling. For example, several other countries require an acoustically activated remote shut-off valve.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/01/nation/la-na-oil-spill-investigation-20100501

Halliburton is under investigation for problems cementing near Australia and they had just done this to this rig. About half of the blowouts that have occurred in the gulf were due to cementing problems. There's also concern that curing cement raised the temperature of methane hydrates causing it to become unstable.

unfortunate how most anti-nuclear arguments use Chernobyl as an example - we can build them so much safer today. Looks like the oil drilling technology hasn't come as far, while still capable of producing devastating effects for years to come.

Unfortunate how most pro-drilling advocates used the slogan "we can build them much safer today".1 2 3 4, etc etc.

These are the same old arguments businesses constantly give to get around regulation. Call the laws "outdated", "old", and talk about how progress has made them unnecessary.

We saw the same "mining is much safer today" from coal companies skirting regulations. And it's the same line of argument that was used to remove regulations from the financial industry. And it's used pretty much everywhere that "stifling" government regulation stands in the way of "economic progress and freedom".

At 5:00 in this video you can learn how the oil companies lobbied successfully to NOT have to use modern safety backup systems:

"BP didn't want to spend the money for a system- a fail-safe system... used all over the world... except the United States because we give them a free pass. ...it's called the "acoustic switch" system.. it's a relay system that... stops the oil exactly from the source... If BP has to do business in Norway, they have to use the switch. When they do it in the US, they don't have to use it... During the Bush deregulation years, you had the mineral management service that told companies like BP that "gee whiz we have a new policy- it's the closed-door Dick Cheney policy..." that allowed the industry to bypass safe systems like the acoustic switch, and there was no need to spend $500,000 with a company that was making $40 billion dollars. It was a complete bypass of safety."

Everyone makes mistakes ... how many states are there again ?

Unless of course he was telling a future truth ... and this is perhaps how he wanted to accomplish that.

And frankly, in case anyone missed it ... Obama is a lawyer. A lawyer who went into politics. With all that goes with it. You'd think slashdot would support the candidate that cares about issues they'd consider important (not that I have too many illusions about McCain being different, but hey if there's a choice between someone in big content's bed versus someone merely flirting with them, I know what to choose. At least the next set of shitty laws would take longer in coming. Besides democrats voted in the dmca, if anyone's going to vote it back out it'll be the other party).

Steve Jobs committed his own sorts of felonies, but now that his got his magical iCops, the entire intenets has forgiven all past sins and gone baloney to defend this vulnerable, wounded , unprotected, defenseless multi-billion-dollar corp.

+1 internets for you, sir. Bravo. Finally something reasonable in this disgusting flamewar. You'll be modded down in 10 seconds, but you're right on the money. If it was Ballmer's phone itself, people would be screaming in laughter and cheering the finder as a gladiator. And the iCops would never ever mind the "incident".

Netflix and gamefly are rental companies. As far as I know, they have nothing to do with the big media companies. In fact, I seem to recall a news story about how hollywood tries to block netflix from getting movies. Then again, maybe I was getting them mixed up with some of the vending machine companies (I am certain RedBox was one which had to have people go out in disguise, just so they could buy the DVDs they needed.)

These two stories don't seem to be it? Why Netflix Won't Be the HBO of the 21st Century. / Delayed rentals of new DVD releases is possible.

Under the situation the poster proposed (game companies keeping the program on their servers and just streaming video), Netflix / Gamefly, Walmart and their kind would be edged out, allowing the media companies to charge whatever they want.

It's okay. They're acting in your own interested. You don't want to live too long, anyways.

However, there are real journalists who have done jail time for refusing to reveal names of sources to the government.

And add to that that nobody asked them to out the engineers name. They just did it for shits and giggles. Real journalists would protect their sources against threats from the government. Gizmodo outs their sources just for the fun of it. As several others have pointed out, no doubt Apple didn't need to ask Gizmodo who the phone belonged to.

Dick move Gizmodo, dick move.

And that really is the crux of the matter. Blogs and websites like to claim that they are as legitimate as broadcast and, dare I say it, print journalism. However, there are real journalists who have done jail time for refusing to reveal names of sources to the government. You have to keep names off the record unless you are given consent by the party concerned. This guy was stupid for letting that device out of his hand, even for a second, but this may have unintended consequences for Gizmodo and its affiliates.

Of course I could have also said catsup, pickle relish, sweet & sour sauce, teriyaki sauce, the pancake syrup you dip your sausages in, the “honey” glaze on a honey-baked ham, that broth they inject into chicken breasts to make them juicy and delicious...

But I guess you get my point.

Nope, doesn't work that way either. Sorry. Your brethren to the south have one farce of a "democracy."

From http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-family-facebook-flap,0,7005846.story
about the facebook accounts: "Denise New acknowledged changing both passwords to keep her son from getting access to his Facebook page. She denied hacking into the account."

about the custody: "Denise New said Lane moved in with his grandmother about five years ago, after she went through a difficult divorce, was having mental health problems and didn't feel she could provide her son with the supervision he needed."

citation(s) needed. I've seen lots of cases. Most were dealing with prayer over the PA system or teachers or students leading prayers at sporting events and such. I've seen no bans on praying on your own. In fact there have been cases upholding the "moment of silence" in schools.

And of course we all know that if you haven't seen it, it doesn't exist. I'm wondering if your google finger is broke. Here is reference to one, here is another, and I won't bother linking to the others but I'll post the link to the same sites if your interested.

Did you even read the articles you linked? Theses are exactly the cases that I was talking about. Those are about school sponsorship of prayer, student-lead prayer at school events, the moment of silence in class, and use of school property for religious purposes. So snide remarks aside, you aren't exactly showing me anything I didn't already refer to.

And those are just some that were compiled at a couple site showing up in the first few results of the google search. And yes, a couple of those were dealing with prayer over the PA system in which the court rules it was allowed. At least two of the cases cited refereed to the use or the PA system at either football games or graduation ceremonies and echoed the same sentiments on when it's controlled by the school or student.

I see one article that refers to graduation ceremonies, and it's the one that the school agreed to ban proselytizing and prayer in the ceremonies. Are you sure you read these?

That's how they've tried to sell it, but it clearly says that this nation is under God (proper noun). If that doesn't profess a belief, not just in a god, but in a specific God, then you're going to need some serious evidence to back up your explanation of what it actually means. The court's decision was essentially an appeal to tradition and a refusal to consider the matter. The addition of the phrase was intended originally to distance our country from those godless commies in Russia.

So if I say God with the capitol G as a proper noun, I'm automatically preaching or endorsing a religion? I guess you were preaching too when you wrote your statement pointing that out. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds? And no, that's not a strawman argument, it's the basis of your argument completely and undistorted outside of the subject being stated.

If you write God with the capital G, it's a proper noun. So you're referring to a specific person, place or thing. In this case, a specific god. You do understand what a proper noun is don't you?

As I mentioned earlier which doesn't have the lunacy of your contention, the phrase under God in the pledge is not a prayer or religion,"Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect." as the courts said.

As I said, the court's ruling was simply an appeal to tradition and a refusal to review it. The dissenting opinion by Stephen Reinhardt clearly shows, through their own statements, that the congressmen supporting the bill were doing it for religious reasons. From the dissent:

"The majority argues that the purpose of the amendment of the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 was not predominantly religious because the words “under God” are simply a reference to the limited powers of our national government. That is, of course, an argument dreamt up by my colleagues that can nowhere be found in the Congressional Record. In addition, my colleagues have apparently forgotten that it is the Constitution that sets forth the limitations on government powe

citation(s) needed. I've seen lots of cases. Most were dealing with prayer over the PA system or teachers or students leading prayers at sporting events and such. I've seen no bans on praying on your own. In fact there have been cases upholding the "moment of silence" in schools.

And of course we all know that if you haven't seen it, it doesn't exist. I'm wondering if your google finger is broke. Here is reference to one, here is another, and I won't bother linking to the others but I'll post the link to the same sites if your interested.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19256
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19517
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=496&invol=226
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/court/lamb_v_cent.html
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/court/rose_v_rege.html
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/court/boar_v_merg.html
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/court/widm_v_vinc.html

And those are just some that were compiled at a couple site showing up in the first few results of the google search. And yes, a couple of those were dealing with prayer over the PA system in which the court rules it was allowed. At least two of the cases cited refereed to the use or the PA system at either football games or graduation ceremonies and echoed the same sentiments on when it's controlled by the school or student.

That's how they've tried to sell it, but it clearly says that this nation is under God (proper noun). If that doesn't profess a belief, not just in a god, but in a specific God, then you're going to need some serious evidence to back up your explanation of what it actually means. The court's decision was essentially an appeal to tradition and a refusal to consider the matter. The addition of the phrase was intended originally to distance our country from those godless commies in Russia.

So if I say God with the capitol G as a proper noun, I'm automatically preaching or endorsing a religion? I guess you were preaching too when you wrote your statement pointing that out. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds? And no, that's not a strawman argument, it's the basis of your argument completely and undistorted outside of the subject being stated.

As I mentioned earlier which doesn't have the lunacy of your contention, the phrase under God in the pledge is not a prayer or religion,"Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect." as the courts said.

You are correct as I have already noted, the phrase was intended to distance ourselves from those godless commies. But what you are not seeing here is that our system of leadership and government (until relativity recently anyways) answered to a higher power. Be it the people, a god, or patriotism and the constitution in which all it's power is derived from the consent of the people. On the contrast, the godless commies decreed the state and their personal power to be the ultimate in much the same ways as the Roman emperors and the pharaohs of Egypt eventually declared themselves a god. There was no higher power then themselves to which the US was st

I agree that it is easy to make anything out to to be an evil conspiracy. On the other hand, the facts here are at best curious and at worst damning. Toyota by some accounts had ten years of disproportionate numbers of unintended acceleration cases which should have raised earlier questions about an accelerator "ghost in the machine". How do you explain [from the Motor Trend timeline article I linked]:

According to the [Los Angeles Times article], unintended acceleration complaints on Lexus ES 300s jumped from an average of 26 per year in 2001 to 132 per year in 2002, and there had been 19 deaths since 2002 related to unintended acceleration in Toyotas, compared with 11 deaths connected to all other automakers combined. [emphasis mine]

Further, from the same Motor Trend [LA Times] article:

The story also notes Toyota has been investigated for unintended acceleration more times than any other automaker, and that 74 of 132 complaints lodged against the 2007 Lexus ES 350 were for cases of unintended acceleration.

Lest you think this is the standard of due care among auto makers, consider in comparison a more proactive recall effort by another manufacturer. Proactive in this sense meaning, before there were any accidents let alone deaths reported.

Researchers have found cases of genetic matches in the FBI DNA database far more frequently than the 1 in 113 billion figure they use. Scarily enough, many states and the FBI now prohibit such genetic collision searches from taking place. FBI officials argue that, under their interpretation of federal law, use of CODIS is limited to criminal justice agencies. In their view, defense attorneys are allowed access to information about their specific cases, not the databases in general.

I don't see this too much in the tech industry, but I saw a lot of it going on in the entertainment industry. Los Angeles is a really creepy city that exploits innocent and not-so-wise young people who want to make it big. This is going to hit that city like a brick in the face.

No big surprise. Look at who's running the entertainment industry.

I suppose you read up on the George Russell Weller case, where he ran his car through a farmers market in Los Angeles in 2003. 10 dead, 63 injured. He got confused to which pedal did what, and drove through the market at 40 to 60 mph before finally coming to a stop. He was 86 at the time. This car was a 1993 Buick LeSabre. (Picture of the car when it was done hitting everyone)

    10 years before, he had a similar accident where he hit the gas instead of the brakes, and his car ended up on top of a K-rail (aka Jersey barrier), and was completely confused to how it happened. One of the LA TV stations had pictures of the first accident that they showed on TV, but I can't seem to find them online. It was one of those "how the hell did he get his car up there" pictures.

  He wasn't charged with anything in the earlier case, but was found guilty of 10 counts of manslaughter in the 2003 case. Since it was so old (90 by the time of the conviction) he wasn't sent to prison.

    In a 2006 story about that case, they had a few winning quotes.

George Russell Weller told police he had no idea how the car he was driving accelerated through a crowded farmers market in Santa Monica more than three years ago.

Nor, Weller said within an hour of the incident, did he know how his car came to a stop after leaving nearly 1,000 feet of carnage, 10 people dead and more than 60 injuries in its wake.

There were 427 accidents reported in the United States involving "unintended acceleration" in 1989 and 61 in 1992 -- the last year for which statistics are available -- after wider use of a mechanical change that made it impossible to put a car into gear unless the driver had a foot on the brake.

Drivers older than 70 are more than five times more likely than others to experience pedal error, according to Rae Tyson of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Seriously. Read the entire history of Israel, not just the propaganda that you learned in Sunday School, and in the mostly biased United States media outlets. Israel has the utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights. They've proved that repeatedly. GP's irony is on target.

Seriously. Get out of your cave and look at some of the current news. If by "Israel" you mean the government then I can find quite a few examples disproving your statement. A nation with utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life probably wouldn't send a response team to Haiti, which isn't exactly known for it's thriving Jewish poplulation, accept and provide aid to Somali refugees or send relief units to Kenya. How many other western countries have done that? And if by "Israel" you mean the population then you just made a gross over-generalization. I live in Israel and neither my friends nor myself have an "utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights". Quite the opposite actually. You accuse the OP of listening to biased news outlets, but it seems as if you prefer to extrapolate from your narrow understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to Israel's view of the entire world. Wow.

> In fact, if I had my way, only citizens from the U.S. would be able to use the software.

If the piracy rates of your software are high outside the US, just look at it as your real customers are already and effectively only the ones in the USA.

But see also Bill Gate's opinion:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

It's a famous/infamous quote. The Chinese people and government took note of it especially the "addicted" part - they still remember when the Brits did the gunboats+opium stuff on them. The Chinese government then tried to push for Linux and open source (not sure how well that's worked ;) ).

Do also see the "World of Goo" example ( http://2dboy.com/2009/10/19/birthday-sale-results/ ) - they sold a lot in their "pay whatever you want" anniversary celebration - they got a fair bit of publicity. I paid USD5 or USD10 (can't remember) and I only played it for a few minutes - haven't played it since last October. Yes I'm a cheap bastard who didn't pay the full original price (USD20?), but they got $$$ from me that they would not have otherwise. I'd never have paid their full original price for it. You may wish to read some of the comments by others on the world of goo thing too.

Then there was also Doom as shareware... Which was a big success.

FWIW: In my previous job I wrote software for a living too, but I wrote it for a company - and the company provides the stuff as part of their service to hotels etc. So piracy was not an issue. I've also put one of my programs on sourceforge for free.

I'm not sure what sort of market you are targeting, so far I do know of people who spend quite a lot on iphone games. Sure many pirate it, but as long as enough buy it you're OK.

Radio stations play music to listeners who don't pay a single cent for it, as a result many (not all) listeners buy the music. They don't buy some indie musician's stuff - because there are thousands out there, many are crap or not to their tastes - so how would listeners know what they like? So they just buy what they or their friends have heard and liked.

So depending on your software, you might need to market it differently. Nowadays many market their products (jewelry, cakes, etc) via facebook or blogs, if you're lucky it can work quite well. Make it easy to find and buy...