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To answer the general question everyone asked about what would happen if this mission had been about Americans I'll refer you to Six Days in Fallujah. One of the severely downplayed (though not the biggest) reasons that game was shelved was due to the amount of civilian casualties caused by Americans in their hunt for insurgents.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/fallujahkonamicancel.html
"Reports claim that up to 6000 civilians died throughout the operation." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah

That being said, I realize that the situations are only relatively similar but they clearly favor the argument stating that such a game made about America wouldn't make it financially speaking. As for it being outright banned or recalled, doubtful.

I guess I'll have to spell this out for you. First, here's an article from the L.A. Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story

Pretty amazing what a teacher can get away with and not get fired with huh?

Second here's an article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/education/15teacher.html) that is less direct but still is pretty damning of the system. Here's just one abridged quote: "New York City has roughly 80,000 public school teachers...Only about 10 to 15 tenured teachers a year leave the system after being charged with incompetence."

So only about .015% of the teachers are incompetent? Don't you think that's just a wee bit unrealistic?

Or maybe you think these studies are just fabrications of the "liberal" media?

I was more referring to the initial sale numbers which were reported as rather low by the media. I don't know about you but I never thought of Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/munster-china-iphone-sales-a-disappointment-2009-11 , and the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-iphone7-2009nov07,0,4313958.story someones blog, as opposed to, you know, like, real journalism.

Remember that studies have shown cycling may cause impotence in men and sexual dysfunction in women.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-he-cycling9apr09,0,5220104.story

Well, given that the average American household watches 8 hours 18 minutes of television a day, all you'd have to do is consider the proportion of the people who use Netflix/Hulu as their television. Just under half of them will be hitting that 250GB cap.

About 20 years ago, the Audi 5000S had the same supposed problem. You can read about the problem at the "New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times", and the "Business & Media Institute".

The trouble began when "60 Minutes" (of CBS News) broadcast a story about a woman who killed her son when she accidentally pressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. Her son was standing in front of the car. The woman, refusing to admit guilt, accused Audi of producing a defective car which accelerates automatically without driver intervention. She even filed a lawsuit against Audi. (Later, the court determined that she was at fault, but that fact was never broadcast in the original "60 Minutes" program.)

The sales of Audi vehicles fell dramatically after that "60 Minutes" program.

The Audi 5000S was never defective, but it did have 1 minor inconvenience. The accelerator pedal and the brake pedal were much closer to each other than they were in a traditional American car. This closeness was something to which a small subset of American drivers could not become accustomed. They sometimes did press the accelerator pedal when they intended to press the brake pedal.

As for the Toyota Camry, is it defective? The probability of it being defective is higher than the probability of the Audi 5000S being defective. Consumer-safety standards in Japan are lower than the standards in the European Union.

Even from an engineering perspective, the Toyota Camry is a dangerous design. For example, the transmission is mechanically separated from the automatic-transmission lever (that the driver uses to change gears). The lever is connected to an electronic box that sends some electrical signals -- along copper wires -- to the tranmission to control it: the process is drive-by-wire. Supposedly, Toyota used 2 identical sets of wires (for reasons of fault tolerance) from the electronic box to the transmission.

Another participant in this discussion claims that Toyota also mechanically separated the accelerator pedal from the fuel line. Toyota appears to have used drive-by-wire throughout the design to eliminate some metal -- thus saving money.

Do not trust the fault tolerance in mass-merchandise products. Fault tolerance is expensive and is meant to be expensive. Toyota likely tried to save some money on the fault tolerance, and it was not able to protect the vehicle from the 1-in-1,000,000 chance of a transient fault in the electronic circuits. The chance of a glitch is low, but the probability that it occurs exactly once among 200,000 vehicles is high.

The fact that only a handful of people have been affected by the freak accelerations matches a distribution of a low-probability electrical glitch. If you own a Toyota Camry, I suggest that you sell it as quickly as possible and get an old-fashioned-technology vehicle without the drive-by-wire. The Ford Fusion exceeds the quality of the Toyota Camry, does not use drive-by-wire, and costs much less than the Toyota deathtrap. Think about it.

Since this same problem has been reported before with Audis, it is probably more large (or perhaps clumsy) American feet at fault here than small Japanese ones.

Us Brits were already aware that Obama follows Bush era policies.

One of the Britons detained in Guantanamo bay, Binyamin Mohamed, was finally released to the UK earlier this year. Since then he's been trying to prove that he was tortured by, or at the behest of British agents. The courts recieved documents from US intelligence that would back his claim, however their release was blocked by our foreign secretary.

Now, our foreign secretary is an idiot, and part of it is ass covering for sure, but the reason he has cited for blocking their release is that the US has threatened to cut intelligence ties with the UK meaning we could be left vulnerable to attack (as could the US) if this data were released. Originally this threat came from the Bush administration, but it seems since then the Obama administration has been asked with the same threats. Journalists and politicians here have contacted the white house to confirm this and have found that the Obama administration does in fact support this policy.

The fact is, the Obama administration has no interest in accountability for it's security services, it knows and has admitted they were complicit in torture, but it seems the extent to which they were is such a problem that they are willing to put the national security of an ally and their own national security at risk to cover this up and keep that evidence secure.

It's not like we're not used to this attitude from the US, as when a US airforce pilot was guilty of strafing British troops in an A10 in a friendly fire incident in Iraq they refused to release the pilots name for questioning and the gun camera videos etc. (which were later leaked anyway) for our enquiry into how it happened. We expected this kind of attitude of coverups from the Bush adminsitration, but the Obama administration? It did come as a suprise I'll admit.

The original story is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/guantanamo-torture

An update is here, the court reversed it's decision and stated the documents can be released pending the outcome of an appeal by the British government. Hopefully they'll lose it and we'll be able to see if Obama really is willing to do as he says and damage security of both countries over it:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britain-gitmo17-2009oct17,0,2433061.story

Change? Not from what we can see over this side of the Atlantic, the only difference here in Europe is instead of a US president having his leg humped by Tony Blair, we've now got a US president having his leg humped by Sarkozy and Berlusconi instead.

" ... Military bases are US soil, just like say Texas or Ohio is US soil. ..."

Military bases overseas are treated like US soil, by treaty or lease, but are not US soil by any means (usually ... each treaty or lease differs somewhat). When push comes to shove, the host country retains the right to eminent domain.

I will give just one, of many possible, examples; in this case specific to the parent, who is stationed in Japan and wants Hulu:
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/16/world/fg-okinawa16

More importantly, there is nothing in US law that says a base is US soil (it would be pointless; it would be extra-terrestrial legislation, which can be ignored by the foreign host). That's the legal framework that Copyright Legislation must work within.

The Bay is probably not suited to daily kayaking, due to strong tidal currents and high winds (the Golden Gate is a wind gap as well as a water gap). Kayaking around the San Francisco Bay Area and twice-daily tides.

So lets apply the logic all the way out. In this case Mr Governor can't censor blog postings on his own site and Boing Boing would have to repost all of Violet Blue's postings. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/06/violet-blue-scr.html OK fine it's not exactly the same but now you need to have government regulate the internet and we don't want that. Boing Boing does have a right to censor and so does everyone else.

> Case in point...

Uh huh. Sounds like you are still stuck in the legacy media's world.

> Then when no WMDs were found they buried it on page 7

What planet do you live on? The legacy media harped on that fiction daily... at least until The Won replaced BusHitler. The facts differ. You have to google hard for em but they are there. We did indeed, quietly. ship a shipload of uranium out of Iraq. It made barely a ripple in the news when it was finally made public months later.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/06/world/fg-cake6

And despite the reimagining of history in the popular version, Joseph Wilson's misbegotten adventure provided direct confirmation that Saddam had tried and failed to purchase yellowcake in Niger. Which, if you could be troubled to read the actual quote.... Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush didn't say they succeeded, only that they had made the attempt, which is exactly what Wilson reported. And since the British government did indeed say it, Bush was also 100% correct in quoting it. Yet the popular version of history, the one created by the legacy media, is that Bush somehow lied. If anyone can explain how that is even possible in the context of 'the sixteen words' I'd be happy to be enlightened.

You would also have to be ignorant of and/or willfully ignore the fairly credible statements of a former Iraq Army general who swears he oversaw a planeload of WMD moved to Syria in the days before the invasion.

> Many Americans still believe there were WMDs and connections between Sadam and Al Q.

Perhaps that is because there WERE actually WMD in Iraq? And when every intelligence agency on the planet was in perfect agreement on the presence of WMD in Iraq it really is rather unfair for you idjits to go on and on about Bush and Darth Cheney cooking up some sort of conspiracy over the matter.

And as for Saddam and Al Qaeda, yes there are plenty of links. No there isn't the slightest smidgen of evidence to implicate Saddam in the 9/11 attack but there is abundant evidence of a working relation between UBL and Saddam. We have direct video evidence of Saddam proudly supporting terrorism in general. He was flagrently and notoriously harboring several name brand international terrorists, making payments to the families of suicide bombers, etc. And please remember it was the Global War on Terror, not the war on AQ. After 9/11 it became US policy that anyone who thought terrorism (defined as random attacks on non-military targets and/or deliberate killing of civilians) was a valid tactic was going to get snuffed.

You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. I too have one and it fairly obviously shows in this post in places. So please try to dispute the FACTS in this post because unless you can do that, while you can have your opinion it will be but a silly thing based upon fantasy.

... because the lightweight frame will fold like a piece of tissue.

You WANT the frame to fold. Ever hear of crumple zones?

Which is why I won't buy one of these things until the frame is a carbon fiber composite stronger than steel or titanium. Expensive.

The advantage of CF is weight, it is not much stronger than steel (if at all, depending on application). So while more and more components of mainstream vehicles will be made using CF, the main reason is for better fuel economy (less weight = less fuel needed).

In the meantime, I plan to continue to drive a gas guzzling heavy framed car that keeps me safe from the dimwitted morons on the road.

Your heavy and inefficient vehicle is not only a danger to others, but to yourself as well. You equate a heavy and inflexible frame with improved safety, but this is not reality, and (if you haven't noticed) the exact opposite direction that car manufacturers have taken ever since safety standards were put in place.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/uptospeed/2009/09/iihs-crash-chevy-malibu-bel-air.html

In related news, a major celebrity basically told the church he was sick of the lies and called the "church" morally reprehensible.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/10/paul-haggis-on-scientology-morally-reprehensible.html

Things are looking up!

What happens when there's a power steering failure? I know it's not a common problem, but it is a problem which randomly comes up.

And it's a problem that may be more likely for Toyota, since they seem to have floor mats that like to smash their cars into other cars.

I, for one, will run screaming if one of these ever makes it onto the street.

Or how about the tragic story of El Coyote restaurant? and what has happened to the elderly owner because she was following her beliefs. THAT IS NOT INTIMIDATION????

Though fucking noogies. She got what she deserved for blindly following her religion. She attempted to fuck her customers, and her customers took their business elsewhere. At least, she should get the life lesson that

Why is this any different than rednecks not patronizing a pinko-commie business???

I think you have a ways to go though before intimidation or especially violenc gets called up for use. I don't think we've quite reached that level.

Really?

Apparently you missed the "prop 8" debacle in California. Sunshine laws were used to create maps to the HOMES of people who donated to support prop 8.

That's not intimidation?

Or how about when Vandals sprayed anti-prop 8 graffiti on a church in San Fran?

That's not intimidation?

Or how about the tragic story of El Coyote restaurant? and what has happened to the elderly owner because she was following her beliefs. THAT IS NOT INTIMIDATION????

Or what happened to a group of Christians who were following their beliefs and went out, in kindness of spirit, to PRAY for the Gay community. They were surrounded by an angry mob, had DEATH THREATS hurled against them and were ASSAULTED. That is not Intimidation? That is not VIOLENCE?

Come on. Where have you been?

The implications could not be clearer; While supporters of traditional marriage use legal and ethical means to promote their agenda, supporters of gay marriage use illegal and unethical means the moment it appears that doing it the legal way isn't winning support. It was all over California during the prop 8 battle, and now it's going to start in WA. I guarantee.

P.S. To mods: Negative mod points do not equal "I disagree with you". If you disagree, have the courage to log in and post. You demand sunshine on votes and political support, it's only consistent to shed sunshine on your opinions. Show courage, be consistent.

... people will have problems using cell phones while driving?

When Arnold says he'll "take swift action" he MEANS IT!

Your pretty ignorant indeed. It seems that your doing what your accusing me of. Your excusing Clinton in order to bash Bush when neither is relevant. You even seem to be perpetuating BS in order to make it stick. Here is a more accurate accounting of what happened At least I didn't praise Bush, like you are Clinton.

And yes, Clinton came into office with him and/or his friends being investigated for corruption. Well, Hillary and her gang anyways. It's no different and you attempting to make it so has no reflection on reality. Clinton acted on political reasons, Bush did to. It's their right as a sitting president to do so. That's why there are independent investigations and independent counsels that are used when investigating the administration.

I've got to say that--for all the many, many other ways the Obama administration has disappointed me and failed to delivery--the recent changes at the FCC and it's new more pro-consumer bent has truly pleasantly surprised me. Between pro-consumer moves like this, their slap down of Apple/AT&T, and their support of net neutrality, they're taking a remarkably progressive (and sorely needed) approach to communications issues. It's too bad the telecommunications giants will probably just bring in their many whores in Congress to pass laws to override the FCC in the end.

I've got to say that--for all the many, many other ways the Obama administration has disappointed me and failed to delivery--the recent changes at the FCC and it's new more pro-consumer bent has truly pleasantly surprised me. Between pro-consumer moves like this, their slap down of Apple/AT&T, and their support of net neutrality, they're taking a remarkably progressive (and sorely needed) approach to communications issues. It's too bad the telecommunications giants will probably just bring in their many whores in Congress to pass laws to override the FCC in the end.

I remember when I first began making heavy use of assert statements. I was using an early release of the Walter Bright's Zortech C++ compiler (circa 1989). I was reading Plaugher and Meyer's Eiffel book. I thought some of the stuff in the Eiffel book was a bit cracked, but I took to programming by contract like a fish to water.

This was early days, and there was a lot of opposition to the use of assert() statements among the troglodytes. The main objections were: it slows the program down, it uses too much code space (a more grievous offence when you are programming in 640kB), and, duh, the assert() statement might stop the program from continuing to run--in front of a customer, if you leave the assert() statement active in your production build.

The space problem was the worst of the three (how times change), so our production build had only a small percentage of our debug build. Our debug build often required a DOS extender to run at all. We used programming by contract extensively.

The end result of having all those assert statement? We had very few bugs. In the two or three cases where a customer had an assert statement go off, we had a patch out within days. We had one very upset customer who experienced assert() failures on an hourly basis. It didn't take us long to determine that this customer had a faulty memory subsystem. This customer was adamant that all his other software ran fine (he thought it did) and that only our application failed. In was one of those cases where we became the bearers of bad news. At some point, memory cache bit rot was going to melt his file system. Did he appreciate the early warning? Not so much.

The upshot is that I've been immune to a certain kind of nonsense about software reliability for a good twenty years now.

I suspect GE considers it a feature, not a bug, that your average radiologists is afraid to tweak the settings on the ionizing ray gun of deep cranial insight. I have a brother in law who practices radiology (reading the x-rays, not operating the machine). Your average radiologist is not average. He does the Navy Seals training program as a hobby. His radiology degree nearly killed him. For the first year, radiology is like trying to discover ET by staring at the white noise on your TV set after analog broadcasting has been discontinued. I suspect he could work through a book of Sudoku puzzles with every second page glued together.

In a design inspired by programming by contract, the final screen would be a dose assessment screen. As programmed, the machine will emit dose X. This is 8x the safety threshold configured for this procedure.

[Scorch patient now] [Think again]

If the exact position of the patient in the machine matters, then this can be entered into the machine, it can render a model which the operator can compare to the actual situation. This is not rocket science. You just have to want to do it.

The question at the end of the day is this: does GE want to? Or have they eaten the Oreo?

But then, it's not like Unix programmers are any smarter. I can think of very few applications, once I'm done editing the configuration files, will give me a summary screen of the directories which it requires for read or write or read/write operation in order to run correctly. I have to use strace on a regular basis to figure out why a configuration file doesn't get read (or gets read and later clobbered by something else).

Like what's the argument these days for that? Not enough disk space? Program would be too large? It makes my brain hurt?

Even C++ shot itself in the foot. Not because it had the wrong agenda, though many can't get past this (I can still hear Meyer's scream echoing from the 1980s). No, because they made function call resolution complicated involving inputs from dozens or (potentially) hundreds of places, and they couldn't b

'How hard would it have been to stick a dosimeter in the machine after the change and run it though a test'

Supposedly the actual dose would have been displayed on the machine's screen (I wonder how prominently?):

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cedars-sinai14-2009oct14,0,5065886.story

'"It's in your face on the screen," said Dr. Donald Rucker, chief medical officer for Siemens, a manufacturer of CT scanners.'

'CT technicians are trained to monitor dose levels, and some hospitals conduct checks before every scan..."There are other places where the techs might be operating more as button-pushers," said Dr. Geoffrey Rubin, a professor of radiology at Stanford University. "The user becomes a little blind to these numbers."'

These days, the term "feminist" has come correlated with this sort of thinking and actions that everyone considers deplorable-

Is this like how the term "liberal" became correlated with latte drinkers?

Admittedly, feminism has lost much of impetus in recent years. The most flagrant examples of discriminations against women have more or less ended in the developed world. Women are more educated, prosperous, independent and politically active than at any time in history. The movement has entered an era of diminishing returns.

But that doesn't mean that feminism has become an outdated concept, like suffragism or abolitionism. There are still many issues and problems that women face in our society and feminists are still helping women help themselves. These issues may not be as urgent as voting rights or working rights, but they do exist and are in need of attention.

There seems to be an American stereotype of the angry feminist; caustic, man-hating and anti-sex. This creature is as much a product of the media as of reality, if she exists at all. And moreover, she accomplished little and less. The feminists who organised, marched, campaigned and petitioned for change are the ones who actually managed to make a real difference, though they never got as much airtime. People like Mary Robinson, who fought for Irish women's rights for years, and went on to become the President of the whole country, and probably the best President it ever had.

Unfortunately, like the term "liberal", the modern, predominantly American, media has made the term "feminist" synonymous with this radical image. Check out this LA Times article from 1991 in which Robinson is described as a "radical feminist". I cannot muster the words to begin to describe just how asinine this description was. That was almost 20 years ago. I imagine perceptions have become even more warped since then.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that when the H1N1 flu vaccine is ready, the first people to get it should be children and young adults between age 6 months and 24 years. That strategy is expected to result in 59 million swine flu cases, 139,000 deaths and cost $67 billion. But there is a better way, according to researchers from Yale and Clemson universities. Flushot If vaccine doses were first distributed to children between age 5 and 19 and to adults age 30 to 39, there would be 15 million fewer infections and 31,000 fewer deaths, write mathematician Jan Medlock and epidemiologist Alison Galvani in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Their strategy would also save $14 billion, they calculate.

I watched it without reading a single review or press release. I had no expectations of what was to come. Warning some vague spoilers may be below.

Within 5 minutes it is clear that this is an attempt to graft BSG onto SG and in an attempt to milk both fan bases for the combined monetary gain. No doubt this idea seems brilliant in the board room.

But the execution is the worse of both worlds. It sucks all the fun, and chemistry among lovable characters out of Stargate and replaces it with a superficial BSG veneer of angry distrust and melodrama. Nothing is left of Stargate, but the gate mechanism and some tired cameos.

The have nothing of BSG world that made it great. Instead they assume dark, dire, angry, whiny = deep. It doesn't. It just equals annoying.

This seems like what you would get if your made your writers watch a few episodes of BSG and make a list of BSG items. Then crib the ones you can get away with (IE nothing to do with Cylons).

So we get dark dingy sets, angry distrusting characters, angry mob scenes, obligatory pointless sex scene, heavy flashback, heavy melodrama. None of the the heart and soul from either show.

After seeing this appear to be a cheap BSG knockoff a quick bit of googling revealed that they at least admit this is what they were trying to do.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/tca-press-tour-stargate-universe-producers-aiming-for-battlestar-galacticalevel-quality.html

"creators of "Stargate Universe," the upcoming spinoff of the long-running "Stargate SG-1," took the stage today, panelists promised a fresh, more "Battlestar"-like take on the space opera."

I am annoyed by the cynicism and lack of originality in trying to give Stargate a BSG makeover and by the end result which felt like punishment to watch.

YMMV of course. Some people apparently loved it.

Yeah, except for the tens of thousands of Iranian Jews that got driven out of the country during the Iranian revolution and whom now primarily reside in Israel and the United States. I guess being forced into exile is your definition of "not being bothered".

You know, there's hundreds and thousands (if not millions) of Palestinians who were kicked out first to carve up the land that became Israel.

Funny how you either didn't know about that or just conveniently overlooked it.

As far as I'm concerned, neither side in this argument is clean -- Israel, for how it was created in the first place, and the Arabs, for the killing of innocents.

You got modded up for this bullshit?

The same Israelis that have constantly warred with their neighbors

You mean the same Israelis that have warred with their neighbors after being invaded by those neighbors, right?

The same Israelis who now threaten to bomb Iran, despite Iran having been non-aggressive for more than 20 years

How is sponsoring terrorist organizations compatible with being "non-aggressive"?

The same Israelis who claim Iran hates the Jewish faith, despite Iran having a sizable number of citizens who are Jews that it has never bothered?

Yeah, except for the tens of thousands of Iranian Jews that got driven out of the country during the Iranian revolution and whom now primarily reside in Israel and the United States. I guess being forced into exile is your definition of "not being bothered".

There have been reports which say that places like Atlanta are still paying for the olympics.

I was under the impression that Atlanta was one of the success stories of economic growth resulting from hosting an Olympics. This story indicates that there were net economic benefits from hosting the Olympics, but you are generally right, the economic benefits from hosting the Olympics are questionable in general. As others have mentioned, Montreal only recently finished paying off the Olympic stadium they constructed for the 1976 games. The Birds Nest stadium that the Chinese were so proud of is scheduled to host 1 event in 2009, but using Beijing as an example is dubious since it seemed clear from the beginning that the Chinese intended to host a hugely wasteful Olympics for ego purposes.

Maybe they'll wake up

No.

This is what happens when, after obtaining contracts to build out solar power for PG&E in the barren, blasted wastes of the Mojave, the environmentalists take you to court.

So much for that 900MW of renewable power.

'They' are already wide awake. You are the one that needs to wake up.

Studies have shown your better off drunk than texting. Other studies have shown that hands-free is just as bad as holding the phone to your ear.

Did you read your references? The first two don't even agree with you:

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/11/books/bk-powers11
Summary: Some random journalist wrote a book about how porn is bad. Her methods are flawed, she overgeneralizes, and several competent professionals disagree with her.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29644568/ns/today-today_relationships/
"Dr. Gail's Bottom Line: Pornography isn't intrinsically bad. It's bad only if it interferes negatively with people's lives or relationships."

http://www.lightedcandle.org/pornstats/porn_is_bad.asp
I'll give you credit: this site does actually agree with you. Even if we ignore the site's obvious bias, though, it doesn't seem to be a reliable source. Most of the claims are worded in such a way that they sound more significant than they actually are, and the most severe claims are without citations. (Some of the papers cited may be reliable, but I haven't looked them up yet.)

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/11/books/bk-powers11

or

http://www.lightedcandle.org/pornstats/porn_is_bad.asp

or

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29644568/ns/today-today_relationships/

No whitepapers offhand sorry.

Nooooooooooo..... They're doing GREAT.

The agency responsible for this brilliantly witty perspective is Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. They've done some marvellous work here. I can't wait to see more of their efforts. Their spin on Macenstein's Mac Chick of the Month (NSFW) would be the bees knees.

I thought paying Seinfeld ten million bucks for three commercials was a brilliant investment too! Without his classic humor Vista might not have done even as well as it did. He's what got the man on the street to give it a go.

They should give them three to five more years before they give up on this crew. Their genius is subtle, but you need a good pool of data before you know how strategic marketing is working. And of course they'll be needing a bigger budget. This needs a wider audience to good market penetration. Maybe they could buy some leader space on DVD's, some long spots during the fall sports classics - the jocks will eat this stuff up. I'm thinking a few spots during the Thanksgiving day parade with real captured Windows 7 Launch Party footage will be just the thing.

After the missle shield thing going away, I'd suspect that nipping the a particular problem in the bud would likely seal the deal for Russia. That one might even get China to play along. I don't see why not, since we're in a good position to actively deal with the problem.

Of course if they don't want to make a deal over Iran, we'll just continue to turn a blind eye as ususal.

which were in response to a police curfew and crackdown on the nascent "hippie" counterculture. This was in 1966, 4 years before Kent State.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Strip_curfew_riots
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/05/local/me-then5

As far as a song about Kent State, you are surely thinking about "Ohio", by CSN+Y.

The checkups at the airport are not the main issue. As you say, when you are coming in a flight from the US or Europe, usually they are not very strict when it comes to checkups (flights coming from Colombia or Central America have a little more scrutiny)

The real difference is going to be when you cross the border driving. There's been waaay too many documented cases of people buying guns (and I mean big guns, like assault rifles) legally in the US with their God-given 2nd ammendment right and smuggling them to the drug cartels here.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/10/nation/na-guns10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/28/AR2007102801654.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/26/kennedy.townsend.guns/index.html

"The border patrol is just looking for stupid criminals"

Like the ones who tried to crash the gates at San Ysidro yesterday?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-border23-2009sep23,0,1977503.story

Morons.

their State Police will have really cool uniforms

Made by Hugo Boss

"Google needs Apple to increase their mobile app install base, and ultimately Apple will need Google to keep up the iPhone's functional parity with the rest of the market."

I think Apple needs Google more than Apple knows. Google has made great strides in just ten years, rising from virtually nothing to offering the best search engine, having a near monopoly on online advertisement, offering their own cellphone OS, their own browser, and soon their own operating system. And we still love Google.

Apple's been around for 25+ years, and how many people use their Safari browser? 3%, vs Google Chrome's 7% within just one year. Is there anything Google can not do? Does Google "need" anyone, or do they need Google?

The question is, does the irradiation have a less deleterious effect than, say, E.Coli being in your juice?

No, the question is is food crops grown with care and the processing of food done in hygienic conditions. That E Coli? The apples were not washed well enough, or were allowed to be contaminated afterwards. I garden and I always wash what I pick, with clean hands. Some things I'll also soak in a solution of water, castile soap, fruit and vegetable wash, and or hydrogen peroxide. I've shared some with a neighbor and even after washing the produce myself I tell them to wash what I gave them before they use it.

Falcon

The question is, does the irradiation have a less deleterious effect than, say, E.Coli being in your juice?

You may think you're just being snarky, but there's real science to support this.

"not that they can't make you implement one."
If you know your auto legislation, there are very very very few cases of laws being applied retroactively. The classic car industry have a pretty powerful lobby. Why do you think cash for clunkers stopped at 1984? Check out: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-clunkers13-2009aug13,0,6098269.story
No legistlation for seat belts in cars that did not come with them, same for air bags, leaded fuel, emissions, and so on.

"Of course, one a tipping point for electric cars is reached, gas is going to start to rise, and then become less and less available."

So demand drops and prices go up? better brush up on your economics.

"you can feel that way but it's false. You can get a car that's mostly(90+%) recycled, and developed in plants that are extremely clean."

How about the energy to recycle? Steel doesn't melt itself? How about the energy to get the parts where you need them to be for assembly, then the car where you need it? Why melt a working car to build a new working car?

Then what about the economic cost of selling a usable car for less then its worth?

"Because maintenance and repairs has no impact on the environment?"

The parts have been made, the cost has been paid.

Or... National Dairy Goat Awareness Week

Goat Awareness Week Proclaimed by Reagan

June 21, 1987

WASHINGTON -- President Reagan took time out Friday from visiting with Chad's president, tracking South Korean unrest and trying to influence a Senate trade bill to proclaim last week "National Dairy Goat Awareness Week."

Acting on a congressional resolution, Reagan praised dairy goats for their ability to thrive in harsh surroundings and for their link with American history.

I'm glad we all have our priorities in order.

-S

For example with a iphone or ipod the functionality can be included in the itunes software. Owner goes in program and selects block device. That device can no longer connect to the apple store. It's that simple if the device is returned or found the owner can select unblock device. Simple. Requires one database on apple's end, a couple hundred lines of code, and a check be made each time that device is connected. It is simple, foolproof, low maintance on Apple's part, and kills any incentive someone has to rob or kill you for that device.

Yes, but it kills healthy kids, teenagers, and young adults at a much lower percentage than normal flu strains. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/30/science/sci-swine-reality30 You are being controlled through fear.

You mean like Honduras?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-0826-morris-fire-pictures,0,2039975.photogallery

The photo number in the header is wrong.

It's photo 24.http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-0826-morris-fire-pictures,0,2039975.photogallery/