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the things you mention always work.

While admittedly much more often than antivirus software, and my reply was mostly in jest, those things can still impart a false sense of security:

• Gate malfunction probed in train crash
• Car collides with train at crossing
• Youtube video of mis-functioning crossing (dozens of videos on youtube (mostly with the gates stuck down) people will apparently videotape anything.)

Ok I'm too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy to continue, but googling smoke detector malfunction would probably yield a story or two. BUt like I said, it was mostly in jest. And the "bridge out" thing, well, I needed a third item and couldn't think of anything better :-)

It is a good thing you aren't president Obama, or you'd have some splainin' to do to the Indians.

I would never want that job... I can see how people might have been hurt by his remark, but taken in context (Jay Leno Show, hello?) it was really not offensive.

As for my monkey comment, it's not just directed at Indians, it applies to everyone - especially those who put themselves in a bad situation just so they could get something that doesn't actually help them.

"America is still having trouble with the "keeping up with the Joneses" concept."

Some people, including some Americans, are still having trouble with the "keeping up with the Joneses" concept...

(Fixed it for you)

"I think it's basic human (and animal) nature"

I like candy and chocolate bars. (Hint: Humans are animals. Seriously. This missing link might go a long way to helping you come to terms with the similarity "between" humans and animals ;-)

monkey see, monkey want.

It is a good thing you aren't president Obama, or you'd have some splainin' to do to the Indians (Aside: BTW Indians are not the same as Native Americans, whom are also both humans and animals, though they are purportedly sometimes a different animal from time to time ;-)

Do you have a list of positions that you have good reason to believe are not approved by Congress? That's the assumption that I am talking about.

Seems I posted the wrong link. It should have been this one.

It talks about, among others:

• DeParle as healthcare policy coordinator
• Carol Browner as energy czar
• Adolfo Carrion Jr. as urban affairs czar
• Paul A. Volcker as economic czar

None of these people, as far as I can tell, have any authorization from Congress to do anything or even be part of the administration. Yet they act as "consuls" and report directly to the President.

The Los Angeles Times published an article today concerning this bill and they cited some important previous Supreme Court precedents regarding bills of attainder and tax laws. For example, the courts have been reluctant in the past to interefere with the power of Congress to raise or lower taxes, granting them broader latitude in this area then they might perhaps in others. Second, the Supreme Court has limited past rullings on bills of attainder to those which "inflict punishment" on specific individuals. For example, Richard Nixon lost his bid to keep the Watergate tapes secret when the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a bill compelling him to "give the tapes over to the control of the public" was NOT a bill of attainder because it did not "inflict punishment" or at least not in the same sense as criminal punishment is normally understood (i.e. a term in prison). There is actually a good chance that this law will stand up and be ruled as NOT a bill of attainder. The only other question then would be when exactly the tax laws take effect; the year in which they are passed (the 2009 tax year - the same as when the bonuses were paid) OR only in the part of that year when they were in effect and all subsequent years? Perhaps a tax attorney among us can answer that one.

You know there's 49 states other than California, right? Not all of them are quite so sunny year-round, or as windy, or have rivers flowing from mountain to ocean, or vast govt-owned deserts. For example, I'm from Michigan. Its cloudy, alot, especially in the winter. There are solar panels around, but not enough to power 10% of the state. And feel free to visit in the winter, I'll give you the broom and you can sweep the snow off the panels. Our rivers aren't exactly roaring, but there is hydro around.

I also lived in Alaska for a few years. Solar would work for, oh 4-5 months. Its pretty dark there in the winter. Forget hydro, its too cold and most of the state freezes. The Aleutians are pretty windy, but you'd have to build the entire transmission infrastructure to get it to the mainland. Easier said than done in some of the most hostile territory on earth. Besides, you hippies from the Lower 48 would complain about some environmental fad in one of the many regions of AK and try to block development.

It might be grid prices eventually, but I would bet rates will go up to market price after all the subsidies end in 2017, link or link or link. Besides, don't you Californian's have enough taxes on everything already? And the 7th largest economy is broke? Thanks but I prefer the +/- of the midwest, we don't need to import your bad habits.

He probably means as they flock to those hybrid cars. You know, the ones that used to fly off the lot that are now taking 70-90 days to sell because gas isn't $4/gallon anymore cheap and no one wants to spend the premium anymore??

Seems like normal people are just as finicky as corporations about where they spend their money and whether or not non-oil energy sources are worth the added expense.

For anyone who wants some objectivity (unlikely to include the parent poster) there's always the Obameter

Lets see how the Obameter holds up... heres what it says about Barack Obama Campaign Promise No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq

On Jan. 21, 2009 â" his first full day in office â" President Obama met privately with the military commanders in charge of Iraq.
...
After the meeting, Obama issued a statement, included below in its entirety:

"This afternoon, I met with our ambassador to Iraq, the commander in Iraq, and the overall theater commander in the region in order to get a full update on the situation in Iraq. Key members of my Cabinet and senior national security officials also participated in this meeting.

"The meeting was productive and I very much appreciated receiving assessments from these experienced and dedicated individuals. During the discussion, I asked the military leadership to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.

"In the coming days and weeks, I will also visit the Department of Defense to consult with the Joint Chiefs on these issues, and we will undertake a full review of the situation in Afghanistan in order to develop a comprehensive policy for the entire region."

Promise kept.

Well that's all fine and dandy right? And after he gets the boys out of Iraq he's going to get the boys out of Afghanistan, right?

A recent article from the LA Times proves enlightening:

Reporting from Baghdad and Washington -- The U.S. will reduce its military presence in Iraq by 12,000 troops over the next six months as part of the first major drawdown since President Obama announced his plan to end combat operations in the country next year, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said Sunday.
[...]
The plan would reduce U.S. troop strength by nearly 10% just as Iraq is preparing for nationwide elections in the fall -- a step that would have been unthinkable at the height of the insurgency but was endorsed in this case by top U.S. military officials.
[...]
The plan calls for the number of U.S. brigade combat teams to drop from 14 to 12. Two brigade teams that had been scheduled to redeploy in the next six months will not be replaced.
[...]
When the American move is completed, it would reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq to about 128,000 troops, dipping for the first time below the number of troops in the country before then-President Bush ordered the buildup he referred to as the "surge" in 2007.
The schedule for the withdrawal represents a compromise between the 16-month timetable President Obama had advocated during his election campaign and a 23-month plan that had been pushed by the military.
Under the compromise, all combat forces would be pulled out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010, but a residual force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops would remain for training and support missions.
The Iraq withdrawals are crucial to the administration's plans to devote more military resources to Afghanistan, as well as to limit spending at a time when the government is facing record deficits.
Senior U.S. national security officials are nearing completion of a strategic review of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, a step that Obama has described as an effort "to stabilize a deteriorating situation," one he has implied was neglected by Bush.
[...]
Last month, Obama announced plans to send 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan -- deployments that would more than offset the troop reductions in Iraq.

Yep. So

A quick search yields: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuclear-waste11-2009mar11,0,6987225.story You may try to hide from the truth, but you can't ignore it forever.

So, unemployment is at 8,1% (highest since '83) and everyone is surprised H1-B's are going home?

Agreed. This is leap frog technology, skipping hybrids. I imagine GM has to do that to even out their guzzlers, increasing their average fuel efficiency & helping out their public image. But what nobody has mentioned is this country's expenses if we don't subsidize electric cars. How much money will we end up spending in Iraq, and what percentage of the reason for that war is oil? What are the security risks and costs of global warming? We've known since '07 its huge. If anyone thinks today's global economy is bad, what happens when we multiply drought and floods everywhere?

Google as an entity isn't going anywhere and you can't call a business a single point of failure

Except it routinely does. Gtalk, Gmail, and other services have gone down partially, regularly.

trust me, their infrastructure is well built to sustain multiple failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Big_to_Fail_policy and http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/10/business/fi-carstocks10 and http://housingdoom.com/2008/07/11/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-too-big-to-fail-too-big-to-bail/

The mortgage, car, and general financial market make Google look like a tiny little grain of sand. Google makes its money entirely off advertisers (they have no other revenue stream except a tiny amount of money from hosted apps), and guess what is one of the first things companies scale back on?

I work in government IT. Government doesn't have the buying power to hire the trained workstaff to set up an infrastructure like this reliably.

High availability infrastructure is well understood and relatively easy to implement. Maybe they don't where you work, but that doesn't imply nobody in government can. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, there is a very, very large pool of qualified, cheap, available labor right now- it's called "the unemployment line."

Who didn't see this coming?

It's just payback for support during the election. It's how it is done in Chicago.

And before someone marks this as a troll, look at the date and the newspaper. It's a liberal rag that wrote this story long before this was known. In fact, some have speculated that the reason the government backed off the Youtube Video hosting was because of this connection and how some people pointed it out. I guess it turns out that they just want to pick their battles.

I don't really care what people think about Google's services. They could be the best in the world. What is at stake here is the obvious money for political advantage and the rewarding of a corporation for their support in getting someone elected. Is this really the change we can believe in when one of the biggest problems with government that seems to be proclaimed by the democrats is all the corporate influence in the political system. I guess this is what "Transparency in government" means, out in the open, this is what they purchased.

Just watch out for the fungus:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-eu-france-cave-drawings,1,4643076.story

The sibling posters have made excellent responses to you already, but I'm going to point out another aspect.

Look at any supply and demand curve and you will see that when supply becomes infinite that price drops to 0 regardless of demand. In the digital age making copies can be done for such trivial cost and by anyone so easily that supply of a recorded song is infinite for all intents and purposes. Economically smart musicians will realize this, and the economically dumb ones should hire economically smart managers that would realize this. You sell the scarcity, not the infinite good. Every artist has some kind of scarcity they can sell. It could be concerts, t-shirts, posters, etc. But it could even just be access to the musician. This has been done by small-time artists (e.g., Corey Smith) as well as big-name artists (e.g., Trent Reznor).

If a musician is finding that it isn't worth creating music because of financial reasons, it could be that their music has no value to anyone(i.e., it sucks) or that people who would value it can't find them. Free music can help to fix the latter. No business model, no amount of copyrights, no amount of DRM, no amount of copy-protection is going to fix the former.

Sorry, not entirely clear -- commodity problems cause retail price hikes, justified by higher 'commodity' problem.

Gasoline, is technically a retail item compared to oil, but for most retailers, their fleet run on petrol or diesel, so for most retailers, they use the price of fuel as a commodity price to base prices on.

Here's a recent article concerning what I'm talking about. Retailer giants like General Mills recently (I think Kellog's) followed suit, downsized produce amounts in boxes, while keeping prices flat early last fall. 12-pack - fridge-ready packs were
the standard 'unit' at all the retail stores in my area that had the widest selection and most sales. Last fall,
all of the soda-vendors decreased the standard unit to an 8-pack last fall. Their "on sale" price is now about the same as what 12-packs went for last fall. That's a 50% price increase -- though tempered by more frequent, steeper sales, for now on the 8 packs while the public gets used to the new "unit" size.

Don't forget about B.O.R.I.S. - Big, Organized Russian Insurance Scams.[google it you lazy bastards]

Why deal with lawsuits and petty malpractice insurance when you could pay a few cronies to stage phoney auto accidents? After all, what evidence is there besides the paperwork that you fill out?

Or better yet, you could insure homeless people and cash in on their deaths.

Hi Bruce,

You are going to have to change your name to Boltar before this is all over!

I was reading a blog article in the LA Times concerning the Internet's killing of the printed newspaper. He comes up with a solution similar to the one I'd use: Make a "news" subscription fee that would include big newspapers that are interested in charging and meet certain criteria.

This could work either through a central site (which would be great as it could provide comparison stories between Fox, CNN, and BBC for example) or simply have it as an add-on to your ISP bill (which would give you a login and password).

A service like this could certainly provide E-book downloads, etc. Information does want to be free as in freedom, but collecting and organizing it takes people who still need to eat. I'd be for paying a fee for news sites, personally, as long as (just like the blog says), it's as simple as iTunes.

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-insider5nov05

I know this article is a bit old and this might have changed already.

I don't understand all the hate for Bill.

You may hand in your geek card at the door.

If BillG's actions as the head of Microsoft we're enough for you, then surely his new mission of spreading IP law across the third world should get your attention? The Gates foundation makes for-profit investments that are killing people they claim to be trying to save. Bill is personally heavily invested in big pharma and Gates supports strong IP law in order to protect his profits.

They saved Salinas libraries, but look into the story: Since 2002, cuts in library funding have approached $100 million around the country, with more than 2,100 jobs eliminated and 31 libraries closed, according to the American Library Assn.

It shouldn't be about getting an ad campaign that is effective. The effectiveness is all up to the person running the campaign not the provider or media outlet. The only way I can see what your describing as being problematic is if Google charged disproportionately higher then similar services or refused to provide service or service at similar costs as your competitors.

The feeling or insinuation that someone needs to use a specific service or product to be effective isn't/shouldn't be in itself enough to show damage. Otherwise adobe and Microsoft should have been held accountable long ago for the government's reliance on PDFs and word DOCs. And yes, there are alternatives now, but that wasn't always the case. But this idea hasn't come to passing because ultimately, it's the users independent choice that put those formats into the positions they are/where in and as long as neither stopped competition when they did become the default standard, it shouldn't matter much.

As for the government going after Google, it won't happen. It's pure lip service and here is why. Google's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt actively supported Obama's election and actually pounded the campaign trail for him. Many other Google execs and employees have done the same. In fact, it has led people to speculate that Google will have a wide variety of payback options and for some reason, I don't think President Obama is going to let anyone take them out. I mean Obama has already given Google via it's YouTube site a no bid contract and control over public property with the government videos being hosted there and being locked by YouTube's terms of service instead of common law and the idea that government produced works are owned by the people and free to the people (let's hope that "lobbying" will get some of the public's rights back).

Yes, I don't expect anything to happen to Google at all. Lip service will be played but not much more then that. There won't be a trial (mainly because I don't believe there has been any harm) or anything of the sort because the administration owes Google too much. The change we can believe in is more or less not throwing their supporters under the bus like many other politicians do when it get's ugly surrounding them.

The LA Times had this "scoop" a week ago. This is old news!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus11-2009feb11,0,6849007.column

yawn

not news

not science

not interesting

"Does Earth harbour a 'shadow biosphere' of alien life?" No evidence for that!
"Do magic purple dragons do loop-DE-loops in the upper atmosphere?" No evidence for that either!

what's the difference?

maybe a sloooooooow news day?

And NOW for something completely different! Here is some absurd fear mongering to keep us hooked:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-thiessen15-2009feb15,0,469161.story

I don't know if I can accept the total balance of commercial debt outstanding as a suitable proxy for amount lending. I'm also not very likely to take my econ information from a website that photoshops people's faces onto cereal boxes; this would tend to indicate they're in need of a distraction.

Your argument, essentially, is that there is no credit crisis, and that it's a conspiracy of government, bank, and media types. Yet for some bizarre reason, we had four bank failures yesterday, putting us at 13 for the year and 26 since late 2007. Home Equity lines of credit have been frozen by most banks since February '08. Mortgage insurance guidelines are getting stricter and Fannie/Freddie are larding on fees and points for anyone with credit score not in the 90th percentile. Credit card companies are reducing credit lines, which must go down as one of the biggest barn door closing after the cows leaving in history. Of course, now things have swung in the completely opposite direction from where we were in '06 and everyone in the banking industry is all conservative, just when we need growth the most! Have you tried to get a home loan recently? I have. You can get a good rate but you have to have over 800 FICO and the fees are ridiculous. Meanwhile the houses are usually a least 30-50% off their last sale prices, particularly if those were in the last 5 years, and short sales/REOs are something like half of all the places I'm seeing. These lenders are slowly drowning.

Let's say you're right and the credit markets are returning to normal. Are you actually suggesting the banks are not insolvent? What evidence do you have that their MBS and loan assets have any value whatsoever, and they've simply become zombified and are only able to fulfill depositors withdrawals by getting TARP money? They have no positive NAV at this time in history aside from what TARP is handing them, and any lending they're doing right now is off those drafts, and grudgingly at that.

I think what you're also seeing on that chart you cited is interbank lending, not lending to any productive activity. The banks are all still pretending to each other they're holding good paper, just don't make them print any more of it by loaning out to deadbeat consumers or businesses!

You're going to need more than the Mises Institute (I'm sure they have no interest in proving some hobby-horse dogma!) to convince me there isn't a credit crisis :P

This campus got a good amount of press for having other dealers providing goods. Never assume.

I see what your saying but I'm pessimistic about the government in that they tend to half ass something and it takes either some catastrophic issue or a mass revolt and politicians running for the "cause" in order to get something changed or fixed. I have the feeling that just doing it is all that will happen.

Seriously... I agree with everything you said... but at the same time, complaining feels a bit shrill. Like Obama signing a signing bill to shut down gaunatamo and then complaining that they just used the first airline that came to mind to transport the prisoners out instead of opening up a bidding process.

Actually, what I was going for was complaining about the government deciding to help a campaign asset out by closing down Guantanamo just to use their airlines and pay them back. To me, given all that is known about Google and Obama, this is very much like Cheney and Haliburton but everyone seems to be giving Obama a free a pass. At least Cheney waited a couple years after taking office and suffered a terrorist attack before paying Haliburton back.

By that logic, any company that wins a government contract (e.g Lockheed Martin) can be sued by another potential contractor (e.g Northrup Grumman).

If there is an open bidding contract and the execs of Lockheed Martin didn't back the president's election just to be rewarded with the contract, then no. If it's a no bid contract rewarding supporters and donors, then I would say yes just like Farms can sue other farms for using illegal labor and other outlawed farming practices for compete unfairly.

Clearly the government can enrich any private corporation in exchange for services and products, based on its needs, yes? One would be more worried about the government enriching failed CEO's with multi-million dollar goodbye packages out of honest taxpayer money, but that's another story.

Being worried about one wouldn't negate the other. There never has been a standard of let this corruption go because that corruption happened. Google was on the verge of investigation until the administration it backed during the elections got in office now they are being rewarded with a no bid contract to do something that the government is already set up to do (CSPAN) but they get control and the ability to pass ads onto it for revenue. This isn't exactly the government enriching a private corporation, I can't see how it is much different then Haliburton.

I hope Google says no, or at least manages this wisely. If the government invades the "promoted content" section with propaganda, especially to US-based IPs, it will not be a good thing.

I hope that the government stops and does this properly. IF CSPAN ( http://www.cspan.org/VideoLibrary ) or any part of it isn't up to snuff, then the primary goal should be to make it work, not to reward some company that put some resources behind the president's election.

How much does it cost? Currently you can't grab the videos from youtube and do anything with them without violating the youtube TOS. So the videos are effectivly theirs and not the publics unless your wanting to face felony computer trespass charges like the chick who caused the girl to commit suicide.

So how much does it cost to produce videos of government and give them away to a company that supported the current administration's election so that company can end up with exclusive control over them and serve all the ads they want? I would say the cost of production at least. And I would say the cost of freedom when the government is allowed to do this without an open bidding process or authorization by congress to give public domain works to a company that backed the president during his bid for election.

Is this the hope and change we can believe in? Or is it yet another example of politics as usual being blinded by technology?

"These reports are created so that each congressman (or whoever else may need them) does not have to read every single newspaper, web site or send his staff on a search of basic statistics."

Just as well. I spooks me to this day when Tom, Katie and other anchors as stunned to learn that [some] politicians do not get their information from news outlets. They have their heads buried so deep that they can't fathom the possibility of bias such as Dan and the Bush memos:
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/sep/21/nation/na-cbs21

When a politician needs information I am glad they have a source outside of the media (though it does not means it is any less biased).

No, the rest is reinvested to "allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making".

But they do this by "investing for profit".

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story

The point is that the focus on maximising ROI inevitably means that ethical considerations come second.

The goal is to keep the foundation around forever so that it can continuously hand out money forever.

Since Bill controls the Foundation, it is effectively he who is handing out the money.

This clearly gives him a great deal of economic and political power.

For example most people have access to investment funds like 401k and such, however, I'm pretty sure nobody really looks at the list of companies or bothers to keep track of the list of companies within each fund.

Unlike most investment funds, the raison d'etre of the Foundation is supposedly humanitarianism.

Given that ROI comes before humanitarianism in 95% of its investments, one cannot help but feel that there is some hypocrisy involved.

January 7 2007 - Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation OR How to cause massive amounts of cancer in the very same communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs. OR How to invest in drug companies that refuse to sell drugs to the very communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs.

January 11, 2007 - Gates Foundation to reassess investments OR The part where they seem to come to their senses.

January 14, 2007 - Gates Foundation to keep its investment approach ... CEO maintains that divesting from firms that harm society would make little difference. OR The part in which they prove, in a sickenly short period of time, that they really don't give a rat's ass about philanthropy at all.

January 7 2007 - Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation OR How to cause massive amounts of cancer in the very same communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs. OR How to invest in drug companies that refuse to sell drugs to the very communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs.

January 11, 2007 - Gates Foundation to reassess investments OR The part where they seem to come to their senses.

January 14, 2007 - Gates Foundation to keep its investment approach ... CEO maintains that divesting from firms that harm society would make little difference. OR The part in which they prove, in a sickenly short period of time, that they really don't give a rat's ass about philanthropy at all.

January 7 2007 - Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation OR How to cause massive amounts of cancer in the very same communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs. OR How to invest in drug companies that refuse to sell drugs to the very communities you're trying to help with AIDS drugs.

January 11, 2007 - Gates Foundation to reassess investments OR The part where they seem to come to their senses.

January 14, 2007 - Gates Foundation to keep its investment approach ... CEO maintains that divesting from firms that harm society would make little difference. OR The part in which they prove, in a sickenly short period of time, that they really don't give a rat's ass about philanthropy at all.

It's "astroturfing" because it fawns over Gates without noting some of the harms that his overly targeted donations cause in Africa. Instead of simply funding health care, he specifically funds AIDS and malaria treatment, and this causes treatment for other diseases to lose what little support they had as workers flee for the better funded Gates programs. Yes, he is saving lives, but he is also killing people through (surprise) poor planning and resource allocation.

The Gates Foundation only gives away 5% of its value every year. The rest is re-invested to maximise profit.

By transferring his wealth to a foundation, Gates has managed to:

a) minimise his tax liabilities
b) maintain control of his wealth (and use it in support of his fight against free software and generic drugs)
c) invest in restoring his reputation (which, for those with short memories, was damaged by his involvement in criminal behaviour )

Furthermore, investigations have found that the Foundation's attitude to ethical investment to be lacking.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines

It is very interesting how this article compares with http://www.cyberconf.org/~cynbe/rants/lastdino.htmThe Last Dinosaur and the Tarpits of Doom, which is just this month a decade old.

If you just look on the surface, the Tarpit predictions were clearly wrong. 2010 is only 10 months away, so if Windows is going to be "as dead as CP/M", it had better get started.

On the other hand, a lot of the predictions in there do seem to be in the process of coming true. For instance, when Tarpit was written, MS never bothered to pay stock dividends because investors were always more than pleased with just the stock's growth. That has changed, and now they are having to pay a relatively huge dividend just to keep stockholders happy. This is the classic sign of a http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/01/microsoft-stock.htmldead growth stock. To top it off, TFA makes a lot of the same predictions. Both have as their thesis that Microsoft will have to OpenSource to survive. The main difference in tone is that Tarpit's author thought they probably wouldn't, and TFA's author thinks they probably will.

You could argue that their logic is just as much BS now as it was a decade ago. Could argue it well in fact. However, one could also argue that Tarpit's main flaw was in trying to "extrapolate the exponential" in the optimistic way it did, and that the rest of the argument is sound and in the process of becoming reality.

3 Million Americans lost their jobs in the last 90 days; and 12 Show Off's said to President 'W, "We need 21,000 clones of Gunga Din, because there is no one in America that can do the job." I think this maybe evidence of Dumping, or maybe a good reason why this country is heading to the Crapper. The parallels of this act, and that of the Romanovs is chilling.

"Beware of the person that does not publicly state their intentions, or associations", Unknown

worthwhile again. This means put in proper cover art, lyric sheets, etc rather than just a tiny scrap of paper.

I'd substitute vinyl records for CDs. Here'a an interesting article from "Wired", "Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin". Best Buy and Costco are starting to sell vinyl.

Sign some fucking new artists for god's sakes.

There are at least 4 shops within a couple of miles of me that sell vinyl. At one someone told me vinyl was popular with local artists.

There's also one thing I'd love to see happen from the government's end, which would be to reinstate the radio station ownership rules. It used to be, there were over 5000 different radio companies in the US. Now, 98% of the US market is owned by only 5 companies;

Which rules are you talking about? The rules I'll support are those used before the FRC, Federal Radio Commission, which was the predecessor to the FCC. Back then radiowaves were homesteaded. The first person to use a radio frequency was allowed to use that frequency in that area. If someone came along after and started broadcasting and it interfered with the first broadcaster the second station had to move to another frequency or stop broadcasting. And the courts were applying the common law theory of property rights to this. It was after Radio Act of 1927 which created the FRC that airwaves were licensed.

Falcon

From the Slashdot article:

Does this mean 98% of votes is enough to figure out how the other 2% voted?

I can think of at least two folks in Minnesota that would have a problem with that many votes lost...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/11/franken-coleman.html

And where I live, the men wear cosmetics too.

You live in Gotham city?

While it sounds all nice and open-source-cozy-and-warm, too many chefs spoil the soup. In the input end, more opinions, points of view, and unique ideas could yield some interesting options and maybe a new and better way. But as the planning process goes on, sooner or later decisions have to be made. The crowd is not necessarily better at making these decisions, nor does it make better decisions. Even the smaller group doesn't necessarily make better decisions when you increase the size of the group.

And opening up the planning process to all comers doesn't even guarantee you get good and talented people involved. You just get more. More is not always better. Knowing when it is and is not is key.

But the fact is, by *law*, we already do have the planning process open to all comers. The issue is not whether there is an opening for public participation, but for how effective that mechanism can be to engender *true* public participation in the process.

Right now, those with the most resources can use those resources to tie up projects they don't personally like, while those without resources who might benefit from the same project are largely silent. If this software effort can level the playing field so that "all comers" can participate more equitably in the environmental clearance process (where "environmental" includes a variety of socio-demographic factors too, such as historical preservation and quality of life), it would be a great benefit (and maybe, just maybe, the 710 freeway would finally get finished).

Yeah, that 'self-sufficiency' is really working out well, Ms. Rand...

Tucker included a terse case list of 25 households he had contacted. It read like a report from a Third World country.

"Near-middle-aged couple, family of six. The husband cried as he was talking to me. . . . ," one summary read. "He receives a very small unemployment income and is out of fuel a lot. . . . His family has been out of food for quite some time now. Their 1-year-old child is out of milk, can't get it and [the father] has no idea when he will be able to get the next can. He has been borrowing milk from anyone he can. His moose meat supply is running out. . . . The electricity has skyrocketed and he can't pay all the bills."

From a couple in their mid-30s: "He and his girlfriend have no heating fuel. Whatever money he gets goes to getting gasoline for his snow machine to get logs. . . . Today, they had nothing for breakfast. Most of the time, they have some dry fish for lunch or cup of noodles with [crackers]."

If only California could find a way to keep the Federal government goons out of their state, their laws wouldn't be subverted.

It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again.

... According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems.

Given that billions of people are starving, I'm going to call bullshit.

We might be perhaps be producing enough food. But only at a cost that is out of reach for many people. That cost is in part due to demand for scarce resources: land, fuel for farming, fuel for transportation, etc.

the number of people needing help is surging dramatically. It is what WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran calls "a perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-food1apr01,1,5014433.story

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/11/25/slinky2.jpg

The wi-fi slinky – so easy to use, even grandma's getting in on the fun!

I never suggested that Limbaugh was not a patriot. I said that he wanted Obama to fail, which he is on record as saying. Politically, the reasons he wants Obama to fail are very important. To the hothead with a gun they are not important at all. The hothead will simply agree that Obama has to be stopped and will decide to try to do it by taking him out. Heck, it's already happened but was fortunately nipped in the bud. You say that the only security fear is external to the USA, which is contrary to the evidence, and nobody bats an eye. I say that there's an internal threat too, which is provable, everybody actually knows but the USA seems to be in denial about, and I'm moderated as a troll? Boy, Obama has a long way to go to recover respect for the USA on the world stage...

How is this informative? The Clinton staffers didn't do it at all. It was thoroughly debunked within a month of the allegations coming out.

Actually, the GAO found $15,000 in damage.

"Notes in desks or affixed to filing cabinets allegedly left by Clinton staffers reading "GET OUT," "Hail to the thief" and "W happens" were shown to investigators but were not included in the report"

But let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/23/seagate_6000_job_cuts/

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/23/business/fi-maxtor23

This was practically all of Maxtor US, Longmont and Milpitas, including what was left of Quantum HDD, except Shrewsbury AFAIK.