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Caste is as bad as socio economic oppression, racial bias etc. Hinduism is not all about caste as your media/mind may have you believe. Dont believe everythink you think. Think twice before you judge, moreso before you type. Google is your friend. http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/cas... . Spock out.

Analytical event horizons of merging black holes

The Geometry of Black Hole singularities

Amazing.
An AC modded down for a crudely shortened summary, to a minus 1. Actually, no.
And the next poster at this moment in time, another AC, says 'nope'.
Has the mod (wo)man posted as AC to strengthen her statement?

While AC's comment wasn't really up to the article, the paper by Kadanoff does what parent is saying; and it is what re-normalization is about.
http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/M... and http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/availa...
are prior art. The former if you're more in arts, the second if you're more in physics/maths.
I don't want to say that there is not much in the paper, it is not my field. Common sense makes me wonder how much effort is necessary in the competitive academic world of our time to self-promote one's work on /.; or to get someone's friends to promote an otherwise not earth-shattering approach into the headlines.

Sorry, I should probably have added a disclaimer that I'm involved in the development of the library as my signature apparently doesn't make it obvious enough: I'm the project lead.

So far we've built about a dozen application with LibGeoDecomp, including porting a dozen large scientific codes towards it. You're right that porting a code usually involves debugging. But that's inevitable when parallelizing a previously sequential code anyway. We don't claim to do magic, we just have some cool tricks up our sleeves. And that's a Good Thing(tm). Because those who claim to cast magic usually disperse just b/s while clever tricks can save you weeks (months even) of work. Here is what you don't have to do if you use LibGeoDecomp:

• You don't have to write a proven (and correct) parallelization that scales to 1850000 (that's 1.8M) MPI processes.
• You don't have to devise your own domain decomposition and load balancing scheme.
• You don't have to write scalable parallel IO and application-level checkpoint/restart code.
• ...and so on and so on. A more complete list is here.

As said, parallelizing a sequential code will almost always involve some sort of debugging, no matter which tool you use. But the library also brings a couple of facilities to ease that transition: 1. you can first adopt the SerialSimulator which performs no parallelization at all, but allows you to check the data transfer and callbacks. 2. you can then transition to those parallelization which run on a single node only (e.g. the CacheBlockingSimulator or the CudaSimulator) to check that there are no race conditions before (3.) you finally more to large scale systems using e.g. the HiParSimulator (used for full system runs on JUQUEEN, an IBM BG/Q and ATM the fastest European machine) or the HpxSimulator (used for runs on TACC's Intel Xeon Phi equipped Stampede; BTW: it's built on HPX, a parallel runtime to C++). 4. Finally you can piggy-back the TestCell onto your model, which will use checksums to validate the data the library gives back to your code.

The FISA court was determined to be constitutional back in 1984. So you may need to change your dates a bit.

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/nat-sec/duggan.htm

Or just follow your ferret.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/can-animals-predict-disaster/introduction/130/

http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html

...doesn't understand the first thing about supercomputers, or even HPC. Currently virtually every HPC application uses MPI. And MPI doesn't take well to failing nodes. The supercomputer as a whole might still work, but the job will inevitably crash and needs to be restarted. HPC apps are usually tightly coupled. That sets them apart from loosely coupled codes such as a giant website (e.g. Google and friends)

Fault tolerance is a huge problem in the community and we don't have the answers yet. Some say that fault tolerance within the MPI layer (e.g. here) will be sufficient. I personally very much doubt that. My bet is on higher-level frameworks, e.g. HPX, which can "abstract away" the location of a task from the node where its actually being executed.

Here's a proposal to do just that.

The harvard.edu news article, quoted in the slashdot summary is inaccurate. It says:

For the first time, they have measured the black hole's "point of no return"-- the closest distance that matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.

This reads as a claim that they've resolved the event horizon. That's not true, although there are good prospects for resolving the event horizon of a black hole in the near future.

As is made clear in the rest of the article, and in the abstract of the published paper, what they've really resolved is structure inside the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO).

In units where G=1 and c=1, the radius of the event horizon is 2M, where M is the mass of the black hole. The radius of the ISCO, for a nonrotating black hole, is 6M, i.e., three times the radius of the event horizon. What they've resolved is structure at 5.5M.

The first author of the paper, Doeleman, seems to post all his papers on arxiv.org, but unfortunately this one doesn't seem to be there yet, and Science has their copy paywalled.

Hey, I gotta question, man, and it's a stupid one. I've answered a lot of dumb, lazy questions here and now it's my turn to be dumb and lazy. How do I make those accent marks and other oddball characters here?

I'm using the Portuguese keyboard layout, I just press the ' and e keys consecutively.
https://www.forlanglab.lsu.edu/exams/KeyboardLayout/images/Keyboards/Portuguese.png

As for the key mapping, I think chromium is outputting ISO-8859-1 (latin 1) characters. I'm sure slashdot doesn't support UTF-8.

Damn, this wasn't supposed to come up AC.

Gee, the government might not be able to force quite as much money from the citizens, and would therefore have less money to squander on idiotic crap nobody wants, needs, or asked for. That'd be a real crying shame.

If everyone paid based "only" on what the government knows about their income, the government would still have plenty of money. If they're hurting for cash that bad, they should take a big red pen, go through this list, and eliminate 50% of it.

Golden Field Office. Inter-American Foundation. Japan-United States Friendship Commission. Management Assistance Team, Management Service Office. National Wild Horse and Burro Program. Center for the Book. Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee. Executive Office for Weed and Seed. Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Tribal Affairs Office. Federal Duck Stamp Office. Six agencies, that I can see, doing the same exact job as the FDA. It goes on but I'm tired of looking at this list.

In short, I have no problem if the government gets less money. Who cares? You're also discounting the lost productivity and contribution to the GNP by having the entire labor force of the country throw away hours or days of their time filling out useless paperwork to tell the government what it probably already knows. I have no numbers but it seems to be the odds are pretty good that the act of filling out tax returns is vastly more expensive to the nation as a whole than a couple of people failing to report their two-thousand-dollar investment earnings.

You know, I've been to some nice fancy grocers that specialize in all organic foods and such, and I've also been to a lot of run down supermarkets in bad neighborhoods. While the ratio of healthy to unhealthy food is certainly different in each case, I've NEVER seen a since store that didn't have healthy items.

What your post is totally missing is the difference in the amount of processed food. Grocery stores in poor areas have mostly highly-processed food, which often is dressed up to look healthy. These are things like the high fructose corn syrup in the "juices" along just about everything else, and lots of other chemical substitutes in the food, even if it's supposed to be "nutritious". In the lawsuit against McDonald's by the fat people, McDonald's even admitted that highly processed foods are unhealthy:

That upon information and belief, the attributes, processing, ingredients, added fats, calories, beef flavorings and its cholesterol effects(trans fatty acids) of said French Fries by the Defendant, and the dangers of consumption of said product on a continual basis, several times per week, were in whole or in part, unknown, and not common knowledge, to Plaintiffs, Class Member purchasers and consumers.

There you go. McDonald's argued that if you eat processed food like theirs on a regular basis, you will be unhealthy and moreover that they shouldn't be held responsible because everybody knows it's unhealthy. Now, given that in order to buy unprocessed food you have to go to Whole Foods (or Whole Wallet as it's called around here), tell me again how poor people are supposed to get healthy food? The bottom line in that we die earlier in part because we keep shooting each other (guns are easy to get and thus are easily stolen by cirminals who use them to shoot people) and that we're eating bad food that is slowly but surely making us into fat, diabetic, walking heart-attacks that don't have the energy to walk a mile, but must drive there in our SUVs. If our health care system were working properly, the private medical insurance companies would lobby for more truth in advertising about the real nutrition value of foods because this would result in lower health care costs. However, they find it more profitable to just drop unhealthy people. Face it, capitalism does not work for some things and public health is one of them. The U.S. is living proof of that.

I'll have Verilog's ability to own my own gun and point it wherever I like over VHDL's lead shoes (so you can't shoot yourself in the foot) any day.

VHDL isn't "comparable to" Ada, it's based on Ada - which was designed to be hard to code in. While that link is a joke, it hits pretty close to home (kinda like that "C++ was invented to keep programmers employed" interview, but more believable IMHO).

I guess Verilog really is C-like in the sense that both languages' type systems don't shy away from the fact that underneath it all bits are just bits, while VHDL/Ada do everything possible to deny it.

This is really interesting, I'd never even heard of the studies they were performing until now and I found the link - as spock would say... fascinating. (raise eyebrow at the appropriate time) What a boon for LSU physics department! I guess the school isn't so Mickey Mouse after all... http://www.lsu.edu/

Who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights act?

Because that is more important than who wrote it ?

Or more important than Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey

But again, the President is the one who introduced the bill, based on promises that were made during the campaign. When the bill got passed, it was after deliberations in both the house and senate, where 20% of the republicans in the house voted against it. Why did you feel it was needed to list 3 Democrats who voted against it, instead of listing the 46 that voted for it?

It has been discussed that the main reason that the Republican party voted 'yea' in such high numbers was purely for political advantage. The perceptions of the constituents at the time, were much more closely tied into how their representative worked with the President, and not against.[1] And my personal opinion, is that the distinction is not between 'D' and 'R', but between 'The South' and the rest of the U.S. Attaching political distrinction will wind up giving you a hodge podge of data points that looks random with both republicans, and democrats, both opposing the Civil Rights Act. When the distinction is made using the geographical area represented, the connection becomes much more relevant. Where were all of your examples from again? I suppose it doesnt help too much if one of your examples 'opposed' the civil rights act because he already believed the constitution guaranteed these rights to ALL. Or that the other one of your examples admitted his opposition to be the 'biggest mistake in his career' when he supported the 1965 Voting Rights Act?

Trying to point out that a few racists were also in the democratic party does not accomplish anything. "But mommy, he did it too" stopped being a valid point of argument for most people when their age rolled over to double digits. Since 100% of the Republican party didnt support the Civil Rights Act either, it would be a trivial exercise to pull out a handful of names with an 'R' next to their names. Neither of those things would change the fact that John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, was the one who brought the legislation to both the house and senate. The Civil Rights Act was introduced by a Democrat, supported by a majority of Republicans, and was pushed through a filibuster(by other southern democrats) with the help of the above linked Democrats that wanted to see the presidents ideals codified into law. It was a GREAT example of what can be accomplished when two political sides work together, and overcome two geographic sides that wont.

Being blatantly partisan helps nobody, except those in politics. Are you in politics? Drone indeed

LSU cites http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html/ some good sources supporting a claim that human hearing extends to "around" 23KHz.

And as andecdotal counterpoint to your anecdote: when Bethesda Naval Medical Center gave me a physical at 18 my hearing tested (yes, in an isolating booth) as working up through (inclusive) 24KHz -- the auditory specialist stopped testing at that point.

With cited sources identifying human hearing at least up to 23KHz it doesn't seem a big stretch to posit that there may be individuals with hearing up to 25KHz.

Hmm, here is some random page from Google on 'Optical Black Holes' http://www.phys.lsu.edu/mog/mog15/node10.html.

There is an early (2000) paper by Leonhardt (that I haven't read fully yet) talking about the theory behind this in Physical Review Letters Phys. Rev. Lett. 84 822 (2000), along with some follow-up discussion explaining why this model might not be, strictly, a 'black-hole' Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 5252 (2000) (but one which describes how it may be adapted to become a model of a black hole).

That Visser critique has a couple of references to papers by W. G. Unruh, who tries to claim, as far as I can tell, that black-hole evaporation processes may be observable and modelled by a sonic black hole: Phys. Rev. Lett. 46 1351 (1981), Phys. Rev. D 51 2827 (1995).

This work is presumably making a transition from sonic black hole models, to optical black hole models.

In future, when I respond to your comments, I shall state explicitly that the intended audience does not include you.

With that preamble over ...

Down here, at the bottom of the ocean of air, distant "point sources" in the optical (or visible) and near-infrared wavebands are smeared out by what astronomers call "seeing". You notice this as the twinkling of stars in the night sky. Assuming radial symmetry*, the 1D distribution of intensity of such a seeing smeared point source looks like a Gaussian, but isn't (it's a Kolmogorov distribution, as the primary source of distortion is turbulence). Adaptive optics is a term used to describe a range of techniques to deconvolve the seeing, to recover the "beyond the atmosphere" 2D distribution of source intensity; the most ambitious of these aim to deliver diffraction limited images, using phase conjugation and laser guide beacons to "measure and compensate for turbulence-induced phase aberrations in three dimensions".

The image cited by pln2bz was taken by NaCO (NAOS-CONICA, Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System Near-Infrared Imager and Spectrograph), attached to one of the VLTs (http://www.eso.org/instruments/naco/index.html). Note the following comment: "Publications based on data obtained with the NACO instrument should quote the following reference papers: Lenzen, R. et al. 2003, SPIE 4841, 944 and Rousset, G. et al. 2003, SPIE 4839, 140." Clearly, pln2bz did not bother (perhaps he felt his SD comments did not constitute a "publication"); he's in good company, as his source was undoubtedly TPOD (or similar), which also did not bother.

Why does this matter?

Fundamentally, it goes to the issue of "evidence", which EU proponents (not only pln2bz, not only on Slashdot) get so worked up about.

As I said above, the two objects in the VLT/NACO image are statistically the same as two point sources.

One could, as pln2bz has done, claim to see something other than two point sources.

However, one could also claim that there's a face in the image (example1: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070421.html; example2: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990315.html), or a planet with rings (example: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071023.html), or even invisible pink fairies ... there is no objective method (that I know of) to choose between these claims.

Amusing aside: some of you have seen this "neutrino image" of the Sun (or similar) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980605.html, http://elvis.phys.lsu.edu/svoboda/superk/sun.gif. At least one prolific EU proponent interpreted this to show that neutrinos are emitted from the surface of the Sun, not its core! {insert ROFL smilies here}^

Concerning BAUT

There is a very long thread there, on the Electric Universe (nearly 2400 posts! http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/28596-electric-universe-model.html), as well as instructions to all those who wish to post on the topic, and links to all other EU-related threads (http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/45529-read-first-re-posting-electric-universe-ideas-here.html).

In addition, this thread may be of interest to readers of this comment: http://www.bautforum.com/about-baut/55206-reflections-year-half-s-experience-baut-s-atm-section.html.

* whic

Actually we do have more than two of these. I used to work for a lab at the University of Florida making components for the cavities; I was also with them the day they went live! Part of me wished I stayed with the research, but it was a complicated racket and I had other interests. Anyway, one of the interferometers is out in Washington State and the other is just up the road from me now outside Baton Rouge in Livingston Parish. I got off I-10 one day helping a friend get to some wreckage yard out in the sticks and low and behold right there off the interstate was a sign pointing south with the words LIGO on it. I thought I should drive out there for those months of work I put into it. Well, anyway, i decided against it, if for no other reason than because just the slightest vibration from road traffic even miles away can throw this thing out of alignment. Perhaps this is why the thing didn't detect any waves a while back. Signal-to-noise on this thing is the most crucial aspect out there!

This is a trademark vs copyright issue. The question asked is a red herring. The actual question is "Does Ford have the right to block one from selling, for a profit, an image that includes their trademark?"

The answer is "Yes, they do have that right. They have to protect their trademark or they lose it."

This is a misconception. They do have the right to protect their trademark and they say the logo of the group is too similar to their trademark. Trademark is not however a right equivalent to copyright. The purpose of a trademark is to distinguish the products of an individual or business from others. It does not grant a copyright interest in pictures taken of the products, even if they include the trademark on them. These are the products of the company that bear the trademark, it is not confusing in the least. Read this odd case about the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame which trademarked their building design and the photographer that sold a poster of the building. The appeals court specifically noted this:

It is well established that "[t]here is no such thing as property in a trademark except as a right appurtenant to an established business or trade in connection with which the mark is employed." United Drug Co. v. Theodore Rectanus Co., 248 U.S. 90, 97 (1918).

When we view the photograph in Gentile's poster, we do not readily recognize the design of the Museum's building as an indicator of source or sponsorship. What we see, rather, is a photograph of an accessible, well-known, public landmark. Stated somewhat differently, in Gentile's poster, the Museum's building strikes us not as a separate and distinct mark on the good, but, rather, as the good itself.

Thus without reading the complaint itself and the reasons Ford has we are left with only two conclusions. 1) they are completely brainlessly trying to infringe on the rights of the motor club 2) there is something more to the case of the mark of the club that is used to identify the source of the calendar is too similar to Ford's own mark. In the first case the summary is correct and Ford is wrong. In the second case the summary is misleading and Ford might be right.

In the 1990s the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland tried the same thing to protect any picture of its building, see http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/trademark/rock_and_roll.htm for the verdict that was reached 10 years ago - almost to the date.

This would have been a major precedence, then, and could have meant that any movie or even TV series would have needed to pay royalties to all kinds of buildings... just for showing the skyline of, e.g. NYC.

Fortunately, it seems not to be so easy with trademarks, after all...

I've recently read H.H.Bauer's "Students who don't study". A bad student myself, I recommend all Prof. Bauer's writing. Not a paradox, really. link

You do realize that it's EXACTLY the kind of thinking that Ron Paul has that has lead to our current problems, don't you? We've been giving people the the "freedom" to be morons and then dismantling the government agencies that would have allowed them not to be because we keep electing people who don't believe in government to run it.

I would have to disagree with that. We have not had a problem of too-small government for decades, if not a century.

Try this as a test. Write down on sheets of lined paper (one agency per sheet) each federal agency (link). Then, research all of the regulations, rules, laws, orders, and mandates that each of these agencies uses to exert control over the behavior or actions of US citizens.

The one thing our legislators are supremely good at is passing new laws, whether they're needed or not, because...well, because they have to look like they're doing something other than grabbing some pork for their supporters in the bill-du-jour.

Wanting a smaller degree of federal government involvement in the lives of US citizens doesn't seem to me to be a sign of someone not believing in government, it's a sign of someone who doesn't believe in bureaucracy, which is an altogether different thing.

You can start from one of two viewpoints (and most will eventually end somewhere in between them):

• Most people are idiots who make bad decisions
• Most people are smart enough to make better decisions than their governments

I don't believe that either of those are true, but I think it makes sense to lean towards the latter, if there's a question on an issue. Not doing so means that you stack law upon law until most every possible activity that a human could perform is regulated in legal fashion. I don't know about you, but I really, really don't want to live in a world (or even just country) like that.

Garrett recently gave a talk to the International Loop Quantum Gravity Seminar: http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/ has slides and audio from the talk (and many other less controversial talks).

http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/lisi111307.mp3

95% of spam huh? quite bad rite..this link contains information how can you reduce amount of spam in ur inbox=) http://www.lib.lsu.edu/systems/software/spam_info.html =))

Besides, the implantation might trigger the explosive growth of a colony of cells.

And there's a chance that it could be malignant

This is a typical non-free cluster fuck, with a heavy leaning on the Cisco side. LSU's Wireless has adopted some stupid new "security" feature that won't even talk to iPhone. It's also causing lots of other problems, even with the wired network. On Windoze, the client deletes Firefox settings which requires lots work by lab owners. Printers have been iffy since roll out and today it knocked out the whole building all morning.

I get the feeling this was planned long ago to help push the Vista upgrade train along. There is no client software for Windoze 98, gnu/linux users are inconvenienced and Apple users get some kind of half ass support that does not include iPhone. The default page for sign on is now that crappy Windoze advertisement, which tells you all about how to set up your "outblaze" Outlook.

The reason it got used at LSU? Federal wiretap laws and poor budgeting.

No real security is going to be gained. Insecure sites will still be interceptable on the much larger internet and Windoze botnets will have no problems negotiating the new crappy network.

For all the whining about Canada, let me point out a few things.

First, all the excuses are pretty hollow and trite. "You have to wait forever", "you have to travel far for advanced care", "mired in beaurocracy", blah blah blah. All of this may be true, but when you're American and you have no health insurance and you can't afford any treatment, suddenly all those "drawbacks" don't sound so bad. I'd rather have to wait for a couple of weeks to get a serious ailment looked at (if that's even true, but there's conflicting anecdotes) then not get treated at all because I can't afford it. Plus, most of those accusations could easily and accurately be levelled at the current American private healthcare system.

(And don't bother kidding yourself with this gibberish about how an American hospital can't turn you away for nonpayment. While I doubt they'd kick you out of the ER if you had a gunshot wound, try getting a broken bone dealt with, or some kind of illness you can't identify, if you can't pay. Lotsa luck, champ.)

Second, I don't think anyone in America is seriously proposing a single-tier system where everybody is exactly on the same playing field. The idea is to provide healthcare for free for those who need it. If you want a specific doctor or a specific hospital or want faster treatment or more tests run or more advanced technology or whatever, you're welcome to pay for it then (or supplement yourself with private insurance).

Finally, such a plan would never involve more taxes if our government wasn't so tax-happy. God forbid we divert funds from pork spending and multiply redundant agencies all doing the same job, eh? Feel free to go through this list -- I'm sure we could all agree on at least a third of these to be totally eliminated and nobody would notice the difference. There are like five agencies doing the same job as the FDA in there, for starters. Just because the government's solution to everything is "tax more" doesn't mean that's how it has to be.

It is telling that most other first-world, developed nations (not all) provide some baseline healthcare system for their citizens, and America is one of the very few that doesn't. We're so enamored with this notion that "free market capitalism solves everything!" that we can't see that our system isn't all that "free market" to begin with. Most critics' complaints eventually boil down to waving away the benefits of universal healthcare with a "Yes, yes, but that's socialism," as though socialism is immediately understood by all to be evil and no more discussion could possibly ensue. It's a weak argument, and it's sad.

I think the fact that you can't see any Vista boxes has more to do with your eyes-shut, fingers-in-ears style of OS assessment.

So, where do you see Vista? I'd like to know where this "fastest selling windoze evar" is going and stay away from it.

I work at LSU. People buy new computers there all the time and I'd tell you if I saw Vista at the Union where I eat every other day. I see lots of Macs but almost no GNU/Linux. If Vista was really selling and people were using it, I'd see as much or more of it than I see Macs because more people at LSU buy PCs than they buy Macs. Given the M$ Ambassadors program, I'd expect to see at least one or two paid showings, but I don't.

The same kind of thing can be said everywhere. Vista is not really being used.

The dungeon acoustics noticeably change. --More--

Microsoft has 95% or so of the PC market. That is not changing anytime soon.

A Network administrator at LSU told me the M$ share was already down to 80%. M$ only services now generate substantial outrage and resistance. It's getting easier to do without the soft all the time.

Verifying Timezone Settings in Linux lists common distros & needed patches and how-to verify settings. Waaay less wordy than the article linked in the summary.

This page lists a bat's hearing range as 2KHz to 110KHz. The human is listed as 64Hz to 23KHz. The 256KHz and 512KHz sampled recordings can fully represent frequencies up to 128KHz and 256KHz respectively, making them indistinguishable to all but the porpoise.

Anyhow, I suspect the GP and GGP are either porpoises or accidentally referring to bitrate instead of sampling frequency.

Not entirely correct. As I recall, it was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that sued over a guy distributing posters, and in fact they lost because there is a very specific part of copyright law that covers this:

 
United States Code - Title 17 - Chapter 1 - Section 120
Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works

                (a) Pictorial Representations Permitted. - The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.

 
( as quoted by http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/ )

Here's a copy of the court ruling in the defendant's (poster making guy) favor:

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/trademark/rock _and_roll.htm

While copyright law does allow protection of architectural works, it specifically does not extend that protection to photographs of copyrighted buildings. It was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who sued, not I.M. Pei. They sued on trademark grounds, not copyright. And they lost on appeal.

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/trademark/rock _and_roll.htm

Of course, if they strike down the use of the Commerce clause to justify anything and everything, then several other Federal programs and departments will become vulnerable, such as Unions and Labor relations, Civil Rights, and possibly even abortion rights. Instead, the individual States will have total control over those issues, because there's no interstate commerce involved. So you can try to deprive the Feds of their ability to mandate ID cards, but you'll probably also kill some other federally controlled programs that you like.

Ah but unions are covered by the First Amendment's freedom of assembly clause and abortion is at least partially covered by the right to privacy and old Supreme Court rulings has acknowledged the right to privacy is embedded in the Freedom of Speech clause. Something along the lines that anonymousity is the bedrock of free political speech. As for killing other federal programs, I'd like to see most of them abolished!!! Make a list of federal agencies, authorities, bureaus, and offices then compare it to the USA Constitution. If the Constitution does not specifcally mension it then strike it from the government. And most of these are not authorized by the Constitution. Take the Accounting and Auditing Policy Committee (AAPC), nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about this. For a list of more check out LSU Libraries Federal Agencies Directory. Not only would the people regain control of government and have a small and limited one, but we would also see a reduction in taxes and more freedom.

Of course, if they strike down the use of the Commerce clause to justify anything and everything, then several other Federal programs and departments will become vulnerable, such as Unions and Labor relations, Civil Rights, and possibly even abortion rights. Instead, the individual States will have total control over those issues, because there's no interstate commerce involved. So you can try to deprive the Feds of their ability to mandate ID cards, but you'll probably also kill some other federally controlled programs that you like.

Ah but unions are covered by the First Amendment's freedom of assembly clause and abortion is at least partially covered by the right to privacy and old Supreme Court rulings has acknowledged the right to privacy is embedded in the Freedom of Speech clause. Something along the lines that anonymousity is the bedrock of free political speech. As for killing other federal programs, I'd like to see most of them abolished!!! Make a list of federal agencies, authorities, bureaus, and offices then compare it to the USA Constitution. If the Constitution does not specifcally mension it then strike it from the government. And most of these are not authorized by the Constitution. Take the Accounting and Auditing Policy Committee (AAPC), nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about this. For a list of more check out LSU Libraries Federal Agencies Directory. Not only would the people regain control of government and have a small and limited one, but we would also see a reduction in taxes and more freedom.

If this person wins this case it opens the doors for alot more. Once it can be shown in court that Kazaa either misled or outright lied to its users, it can then be shown that Kazaa was AIDING AND ABETTING the the criminal violation of copyright laws. Once that takes place, then Kazaa itself can be held liable for CRIMINAL actions.

It would not surprise me in THE SLIGHTEST that the RIAA is behind this themselves. Its all about "precedence". Once you win a small case, its only makes it that much easier to use that small case as a foothold in larger, farther reaching and far more serious cases.

For those of you who wonder just who little twitter here is, a synopsis:

This is the original confirmation of his real identity. We've had that suspicion for quite a while but there was no way to prove it for sure. He reacted predictably enough instead of just ignoring the post.

Here is further confirmation. And this. As you can see, this guy is just insanely retarded - all he had to do do was just ignore the posts and we still wouldn't know for sure. He didn't reply to this, but by that time it wasn't necessary. Someone (not us) then posted this as well. We think that was the same person who registered this account, but we're not sure. He also has another lame home page. And this is his Cox page.

As for his sockpuppet account, here's some dialectic proof (you can see the 'twitter' oozing out of there well enough), along with mention of "nuclear power", a topic which he claims to know about but is just generally ignorant about (as with everything else). Here's one where he mentions the BRLUG. A message was posted to the BRLUG (see "Willy evangelizes" thread here) for further confirmation, which he graciously provided.

For those of who are new to the twitter experience, here's a thread that distills the interaction between KeithRussel and twitter: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195829&cid=160 48784. Wow.

And finally, some great twitter material:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=88413&cid=7656 803
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77588&cid=6896 690
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=73226&cid=6595 921
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=71864&cid=6492 229
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69025&cid=6312 196
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=49657&cid=5011 656
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=180946&thresho ld=1&cid=14972959
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129735&thresho ld=5&cid=10823036
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=112229&cid=952 1025&threshold=5
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137420&cid=11

A bit like a tape robot?

This should give you a lot of help. They fly instrumented balloons in Antarctica. The server does not seem to be responding right now, but that should help you find what you need.

"you have the RIGHT to do with your body what you want" If you're in the USA, Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) says you don't have anything of the sort. This case specifically addresses your right to do as you will with your body. Even when it comes to protecting your own health, let alone using whatever drugs the govt has decided to have a moral panic about this year. Have a read someday. This case really does define your (American) rights: http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/vaccines/Jacobson _v_Massachusetts.htm

This is the original confirmation of his real identity. We've had that suspicion for quite a while but there was no way to prove it for sure. He reacted predictably enough instead of just ignoring the post.

Here is further confirmation. As you can see, this guy is just insanely retarded - all he had to do do was just ignore the posts and we still wouldn't know for sure. He didn't reply to this, but by that time it wasn't necessary. Someone (not us) then posted this as well. We think that was the same person who registered this account, but we're not sure. He also has another lame home page. And this is his Cox page.

As for his sockpuppet account, here's some dialectic proof (you can see the 'twitter' oozing out of there well enough), along with mention of "nuclear power", a topic which he claims to know about but is just generally ignorant about (as with everything else). Here's one where he mentions the BRLUG. A message was posted to the BRLUG (see "Willy evangelizes" thread here) for further confirmation, which he graciously provided.

As to his wife... well, that's another story =)

I see no reason to not allow built in hands-free kits when many drivers can use them safely. I really wonder about the accuracy of the ONE study that claims talking while driving is as bad as driving drunk.

I've actually more thoroughly addressed this in another post. It's not just ONE study. That post is just about the body work of a single researcher, but he's one of the few researchers to actually put people in simulators and measure reaction times instead of doing after-the-fact statistical analysis of accidents.

Hands free vs. handset is mostly irrelevant for reaction time, so it's not possible to use a hands-free set "safely." It's the problem of dual-task separation that causes slower reaction times when using a cellphone. You can't concentrate as well on the road when concentrating on a conversation. We aren't as capable of multitasking as we think we are, and controlled experiments have measured the difference.

From the 7th study on Strayer's site:

Compared to single-task conditions, cell-phone drivers' reactions were 18% slower, their following distance was 12% greater, and they took 17% longer to recover the speed that was lost following braking.

Incidentally, in the 8th study where he compares people with a BAC of 0.08 vs cellphone drivers, the drunk drivers manage to get away without an accident while the cellphone drivers had 3. I found that funny.

But if you compare the current gulf war to stats on previous engagements, it is still a minor effort.

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/other/stats/warcost.htm

Economic costs more than GWI but about half of Vietnam and similar to Korea, nothing compared to WWII. That page has 1990s dollars, so we are off by a decade.

Also, a lot of the money spent goes to rebuilding efforts I believe. Think of it as military costs plus the Marshall plan.

As for casualties and people engaged, GWII is a minimal effort.

The scariest part of your post is that there appear to be 23 people for every tax payer. That is crazy, but probably true in the US.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, Sony's biggest enemy is themselves. The Entertainment half won't let the Consumer Electronics half do anything that they think might deprive them of a single penny--i.e., by making a device that you can play a movie or song on. "OH NOES!!!!11", they cry. "If someone wants to watch a Sony movie on $NEW_DEVICE, they have to buy it again!" Which consumers, obviously, don't want to do.

Remember, more Americans died in our own civil war than any other war we've participated in, before or since. Civil wars tend to be like that. Same thing with Sony.

http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/classics/olc17vocab.html According to that chart domus becomes domi with a long i.