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Skip the blog post and go to the actual at http://www.lvrj.com/news/if-you-lose-your-cellphone-don-t-blame-wayne-dobson-186670171.html.

Is it vigilantism for me to knock on your door and peacefully ask if you have seen my phone?

Read the original article.
This is clearly not what is happening.

And even if you should ask politely and during polite hours, unlike the people this man has encountered, you would be taking the law into your own hands and accusing him of lying if you rang his doorbell over this despite the clear note he has put up outside his home.

Part of the problem is that people use technology they don't understand. Sprint isn't pointing out his home as the address where the phone is. It's a triangulation starting point, with an error margin of several hundred feet in all directions.

tl;dr: The real victim isn't the yobo who lost his phone.

Something along the lines of "Yes, the tracker says your Phone is here. No, it is not. Please call SPRINT at 1-800-xxx-xxxx" Lo-tech, but effective.

It's not a great picture, but he appears to have a sign next to his front door saying pretty much that.

Apparently it is a "one-match-and-you're-guilty" system. Here's two cases in which the only possible evidence was the DNA match (since the two people were in fact innocent) and it was enough to get a conviction: http://www.lvrj.com/news/dna-related-error-led-to-wrongful-conviction-in-2001-case-125160484.html or http://www.smh.com.au/national/dna-lab-error-led-to-false-conviction-20091002-ggj6.html. Of course sometimes you get lucky and only get to spend a few months of your life in custody before they notice they screwed up: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17324912, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19412819.

And yes your "qualified expert"s are great. You know aside from minor issues like putting the wrong name on samples and contaminating samples.

"Please link to proof of your "literally unacceptable percentage of false positives" for properly trained canines and handlers."

Easily done.

It amazes me how many people are so ready to call "bullshit" without taking 10 goddamned seconds on Google to check their facts.

If you think that is the only such study, you are mistaken. Google it dude. Learn something.

A federal judge just struck down Nevada's "None of the above" ballot option.

Let's face it, the .com domain registry is in the US and the the US does have jurisdiction by the logical extension to the Internet of old case law.

US servers are being told to resolve domains.

Courts, prosecutors, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security (and other things) being able to arbitrarily seize domains IS the problem.

The only purpose for seizure as it was intended to be used when restrictions on search and seizure were added to the Constitution was to gather and preserve evidence.

That is its only LEGITIMATE purpose still, unless someone has been convicted of a crime and it is part of their sentence or to stop a terrorist attack.

And if they don't have the Department of Homeland Security STOP worrying about bullshit and just deal with actual homeland security, I'm afraid another 9/11 is extremely likely. Having them involved in the War on Drugs and the War on Piracy and the War on Gambling is going to make us lose the War on Terror (the only one WORTH fighting).

And FreeNet is easy to take down.

Try, convict and then sentence node owners to 20 years in prison. The rest will shut themselves down.

You don't even need to convict people. Here in Las Vegas, someone was accused (not even yet tried) of possessing child pornography. Rather than try the alleged pervert, they assigned him a cellmate in the Clark County Detention Center (*) who was an accused murderer of a child (killing his own nephew!), who, get this, ended up killing (BEAT and STABBED to death) the alleged pervert. Imagine that.

That was a hit.

So now people know that just being accused can result in an indirect death sentence. Even those innocent could die.

And guess what one running a FreeNet node could be accused of trafficing in? They could be set up with bogus/planted evidence, arrested, set up in prison and brutally killed with in a week! No need for a trial where someone could be found not guilty.

Talk about a chilling effect!

(*) This jail is way out of control. Maybe not as bad as Rikers Island in NYC, but close! Some years back they put someone accused of marijuana possession in with hardened criminals and he got raped in the shower. I don't think that was an accident.

Sam Donaldson of Stop Prison Rape (now Just Detention International) was set up in the DC jail to get raped - read the story. (**)

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/15175310/inmate-murdered-at-ccdc
http://www.lvrj.com/news/inmate-kills-roommate-in-clark-county-detention-center-126413548.html

http://www.bravemantherapy.com/articles/prison.htm
"In 1997, Robert was arrested for possession of marijuana and taken to the Clark County detention center in Las Vegas where three men raped him in the shower. Now, 18 months out of prison, he is still trying to come to terms with the experience."

Guess they taught him a lesson for daring to possess the "evil reefer"!

(**)

http://www.jimgoad.net/pdf/prison/donny.pdf

Take a look at this story from today. Link http://www.lvrj.com/news/video-shows-officers-beating-motorist-in-diabetic-shock-138901274.html Even with video evidence of cops beating a guy for being in diabetic shock no one was fired. Would we even know about this if it hadn't been caught on video? While on duty every police officer should be subject to oversight.

Sears actually took this very issue all the way to the supreme court and WON. That's how we have the "physical nexus" rule, any why Amazon's Fernley, NV distribution center handles most orders in California, in the first place. The ironic thing is that now Sears has done a 180 and wants Amazon to have to pay the tax that Sears does not. Fortunately, the ruling protects everyone, not just Sears.

How the state legislature thinks they can override the SCOTUS though, I don't know.

Semi off-topic, but in a list of states that Amazon collects taxes from Nevada wasn't mentioned. I know they have distribution centers there; anyone know what special deal allows them to operate a distribution center without collecting taxes on Nevada orders? I'm fairly sure that Nevada does in fact have a statewide sales tax.

Never mind, just looked it up. Seems that Amazon has been arguing that a distribution center doesn't count as a physical presence in a state, so they don't collect taxes in Nevada. That right there should be enough to show that Amazon is full of shit.

Apparently the same thing happened in Texas, only when they were sent a bill for uncollected taxes they closed their distribution center instead of paying. I suppose they could do the same thing in Nevada (of course, if it suddenly takes another day or two for deliveries to California, which is the whole point of having their warehouses in Nevada, they would likely lose a lot of California business; probably better just to collect taxes on Nevada orders).

The reason that Republicans want you to show ID when you vote is to suppress the voting of people who are more likely to vote for Democrats. The level of voter fraud, that is people who are not eligible to vote voting, is so minuscule in this country it's not an issue. In Ohio in 2004 they looked for that and only found 4 out of millions of votes. Yes it could effect an election that comes down to 1 or 2 votes but how often does that happen?

The reason Democrats don't want you to have to show ID is that it's harder for them to cheat their way to a win (2004 Washington governor's election, anybody?) if would-be voters are all being checked. Felons, illegal aliens, etc. voting only serve to dilute your legitimate vote; why anyone would want to allow that is beyond me.

As for elections that come down to one or two votes, North Las Vegas just had one earlier this month.

Since then, officials from the two countries have been working behind the scenes on the details. The purpose of the negotiations is to establish an "action plan" on border security aimed at tightening protection against terrorists and easing the flow of cross-border traffic.

Last time I checked, our northern brethren aren't the ones causing the problems. Oh and if you're really interested in some BS, look a how the ATF encouraged fire-arms sales to the drug cartels. And how Mexico is basically New Afghanistan, with all sorts of fun brewing there. We're so worried about airport security, when behind our backs the terrorist cells are clamoring to proverbially hop the fence--they know the Fed isn't guarding it. Or maybe I'm just wrong and being a racist.

Uh, that's certainly VERY "little research". Essentially, it's an opinion piece that includes two quotes - one from a Stephens Media rep who expresses hope that the lawsuits in question will result in more linkbacks to LVRJ articles online (and, by implication, fewer cops of LVRJ content), and the other from the slimebag that runs Righthaven. Now, since Stephens Media does NOT own Righthaven, I fail entirely to see how this "suggests" in any way, shape, or form that Stephens Media is "probably a lot slimy."

Which brings up the question of why you believe that a freelance writer (i.e. - me) selling a story to a weekly magazine whose editorial management is (as is the case with EVERY ethical news operation) completely divorced and firewalled from the business management side of the operation is in any way unethical, immoral, or "slimy".

Huh....actually, I chose to use the link to techdirt's piece 'cuz using Wikipedia is often considered to be "too easy" while I figured including a link to the statement of the President and CEO of Stephens Media announcing that Stephens Media had "grubstaked and contracted with a company called Righthaven" and filed 22 lawsuits as merely their opening salvo was likely to bias the reader. Especially if the reader knew the definition of "grubstake". .And I said the money they paid you was likely slimy; I did not say you were slimy for accepting it - rather, you chose to interpret it that way. Or perhaps, rather unusually for a freelance writer in America, English is your second language?

Oh, fer pity's sake:

grubstake/grbstk/ Verb: Provide with a grubstake. Noun: An amount of material, provisions, or money supplied to an enterprise (originally a prospector for ore) in return for a share in the resulting profits.

"A share in the profits" /= ""ownership".

And: "I said the money they paid you was likely slimy; I did not say you were slimy for accepting it - rather, you chose to interpret it that way," is sheer semantic handwaving on your part. Claiming that money paid for work entirely unrelated to copyright trolling and predating the creation of Righthaven by nearly three years is "slimy" implies a moral judgement on YOUR part about MY accepting it.

So kindly go fuck yourself, Judgey McJudgington.

Uh, that's certainly VERY "little research". Essentially, it's an opinion piece that includes two quotes - one from a Stephens Media rep who expresses hope that the lawsuits in question will result in more linkbacks to LVRJ articles online (and, by implication, fewer cops of LVRJ content), and the other from the slimebag that runs Righthaven. Now, since Stephens Media does NOT own Righthaven, I fail entirely to see how this "suggests" in any way, shape, or form that Stephens Media is "probably a lot slimy."

Which brings up the question of why you believe that a freelance writer (i.e. - me) selling a story to a weekly magazine whose editorial management is (as is the case with EVERY ethical news operation) completely divorced and firewalled from the business management side of the operation is in any way unethical, immoral, or "slimy".

Huh....actually, I chose to use the link to techdirt's piece 'cuz using Wikipedia is often considered to be "too easy" while I figured including a link to the statement of the President and CEO of Stephens Media announcing that Stephens Media had "grubstaked and contracted with a company called Righthaven" and filed 22 lawsuits as merely their opening salvo was likely to bias the reader.

Especially if the reader knew the definition of "grubstake".

.And I said the money they paid you was likely slimy; I did not say you were slimy for accepting it - rather, you chose to interpret it that way. Or perhaps, rather unusually for a freelance writer in America, English is your second language?

The article they probably got this story from is a bit more informative - complete with diagram!:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/vdara-visitor---death-ray--scorched-hair-103777559.html

Yes, there is...but "there" is only in your head.
Go to the actual site, and you will find the actual text to be "Share & Save" - under the article.

There's no mention of sharing a link to the article. You read the article, and then it offers you to share & save (it).

Hell, it doesn't even further specify the "save" part. As far as I'm concerned, doing File -> Save As in my browser is a perfectly fine way of saving the article.
If I then drop the resulting files on a publicly accessible server, I just saved their article as requested, and then shared it as requested.

Your distinction would have merit, if it existed in reality.
But it doesn't.

Example

But.. LVRJ didn't say "Share a link" -- at the bottom of the page is says:

"Share & Save"

followed by a host of links.

If the instruction "Share & Save" is taken to be an instruction as to Copyright disposition for the story, I can easily see any claim to Copyright violation being thrown out.

And, this instruction is at the bottom of current LVRJ stories -

ref

http://www.lvrj.com/news/bill-scott-anticipates-attempt-to-clear-police-in-costco-slaying--trash-his-dead-son-s-name-103510074.html

as an example

The paper is called the Las Vegas Review-Journal, not Journal Review. http://www.lvrj.com/

check your copy much? oh, yeah...

I was wondering about the "copy this article" claim, so I went to the LVJ website. I went to the first news article which was

http://www.lvrj.com/news/bill-scott-anticipates-attempt-to-clear-police-in-costco-slaying--trash-his-dead-son-s-name-103510074.html

There you can see, at the bottom of the article, a whole slew of "share on some other website" links, including Digg and Slashdot. The last icon is a heart, which I think is a way of adding the article to some kind of personal LVJ list of favorite articles.

I don't see a link making it trivial to copy the text of the article, though of course it's no harder than selecting it and copying it. So, if that's right, I think that would be a hindrance to this defense, because the "implied license" would be to share a link to the article on aggregation sites which exist for the purpose of sharing links, not full articles. Moreover, the implied license would probably only apply to the listed sites.

Also, there are two separate conspicuous copyright notices on the page. Of course, I can't say whether those notices were present in the past at the time of the alleged infringement.

Disclaimers:

• Fuck Rightshaven
• I am not a lawyer
• Your mileage may vary
• Reform copyright now

Righthaven did not create the article in question. They bought the rights from the creators solely so they could sue the infringer and profit from her. That sounds like copyright trolling to me.

No, that makes it sound like the LV Review Journal aren't party to it. In fact the owners of the NVRJ also own Rightshaven. They set up the arrangement to pursue copyright infringers.
  http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm/Copyright_theft_Were_not_taking_it_anymore.html?ref=164

There's no copyright trolling here. Just a case of setting up a separate company to do the pursuit of copyright infringement. A company which can then also offer that service to other content creators.

It's perfectly reasonable. Neither LV RJ nor Rightshaven are at fault here. The only people who are at fault are those who steal their content rather than create it themselves; who copy and paste rather than link; who go beyond fair use, and just reproduce the whole article.

I get it that lots of people don't like Harry Reid. That's fine. But angle is amazingly, dangerously, stupidly incompetent, and perhaps crazy.

She made a lot of noise about "second amendment remedies" if she doesn't get elected, and now has to back track that and either avoid questions, or blatantly state that she's not really advocating armed revolution. Always a good sign.
http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/politics/Another_Angle_issue_emerges.html?ref=279

This one is golden. The idea that she should be "friends" with the media and they should report what *she* wants? HILARIOUS!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20012559-503544.html

Or just take your pick. She wants most of the federal government abolished, and is more or less anti-science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharron_Angle

Well I agree with a lot of what you said. We on the conservative side have our share of jerks trying to jump on the bandwagon of the moment, some of whom you mentioned, just like the left has theirs (Olbermann, Maher, and I would include Jon Stewart as well, as well as everybody on MSNBC which is actually more biased than Fox). As for those who have or aspire to political power, come on, Biden?, Hillary?, Sharpton? etc etc one populist windbag next to another.

Take a look at the republican primaries and see how the established GOP insiders are running scared state after state. Here in NV the republican hand picked candidate Sue Lowden is now behind in the polls to the previously almost unknown Tea Party endorsed Sharron Angle and the state GOP establishment is so pissed that some are threatening to support Reid (talk about political suicide) http://www.lvrj.com/news/angle-irks-some-gop-insiders-94565394.html There is a new crop op republicans coming through these primaries on the back the Tea Party support and I think some new leaders will emerge.

It's hard for a fledgling grassroots movement to completely shun somebody as high profile as Palin and the publicity that she brings, but actually she is not mentioned on any Tea Party websites as any kind of a leader, and many are trying to distance the movement from her: http://www.newpatriotjournal.com/Articles/Tea_Party_Patriots_Dispute_Claims_that_Sarah_Palin_is_the_Tea_Party_Leader . I don't dislike Palin as a person but she doesn't have the intellectual capacity to lead a girl scout troop, never mind the country.

Here are some examples for you

Man shoots, kills intruder who broke into his home

Resident Shoots Home Invasion Suspect

Three held in Palmview home invasion

Home invasion suspect recovering

I know they are just anecdotes, but they are good examples of what can happen in a home invasion.

If I were in any of these situations I would not want anything getting in the way of my firearm working.

AC has garbled the story slightly. The fraudulent part was not the degree of compression, but the software's supposed ability to recognize objects in a video stream.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/47141377.html

Which explains the credulity. This software would have been very valuable if it had been legit.

They do not have point of asking for ALL information of EVERY ONE that posted. This includes Credit Card Numbers, ISP, and Addresses for every poster.

If they tailored request to those few (I read three) that actually crossed the line into threatening, then it is what you say.

I guess the prosecutors eventually got that exact message, because they have now narrowed the subpoena to just two posters.

I don't really disagree with your point, but in this case it's just William Cohan once again being a complete tool. He'd go after your grandmother for assault on a public official if she complained about a tax bill. He's been going after Robert Kahre for years, this isn't the first time. This latest round reeks of vindictiveness over having his case completely thrown out the last time he tried it.

Here's a little more background if you're interested.

They do not have point of asking for ALL information of EVERY ONE that posted. This includes Credit Card Numbers, ISP, and Addresses for every poster.

If they tailored request to those few (I read three) that actually crossed the line into threatening, then it is what you say.

I guess the prosecutors eventually got that exact message, because they have now narrowed the subpoena to just two posters.

I don't really disagree with your point, but in this case it's just William Cohan once again being a complete tool. He'd go after your grandmother for assault on a public official if she complained about a tax bill. He's been going after Robert Kahre for years, this isn't the first time. This latest round reeks of vindictiveness over having his case completely thrown out the last time he tried it.

Here's a little more background if you're interested.

Even more fun buy some gold and silver coins with legal tender values on them. Give those as gifts. They can claim the face value of the coins. A person paying employees this way was charged with 161 counts of federal charges and a jury found him innocent of them all. Of course the FBI raided his business with SWAT and months of trials. But I think this is the funniest thing I've heard dealing with feds in awhile. 13 grand worth of coins is a lot of precious metal!

They are probably off celibrating the voting win. Give them a few days and things will be back to normal.

Meanwhile, OUR wonderful governments here can not secure the voting rights against the scammers...

Dead people voting? No computers raising alarms...

last i seen the democrats were in control of the legislature. what does that say about mccain again?

oh, this is the kind of asshattery we got from a democratic legislature.

More like... "Sorry, folks, its in fucking Yucca Mountain underneath layers of concrete, where no seismic activity occurs, deep underground , nowhere near civilization.

That is incorrect .

An earthquake fault line exists underneath Yucca Mountain:

Title: Yucca fault line might spring surprise
Author: Keith Rogers
Date: September 24, 2007
Publisher: Las Vegas Review Journal
Link: http://www.lvrj.com/news/9954856.html

Bore hole drilling operations at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site have turned up preliminary evidence that an earthquake fault line passes beneath the place where project officials want to build concrete pads for storing thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel.

A letter and maps from the U.S. Geological Survey obtained last week by the Review-Journal show that the Bow Ridge fault passes directly beneath the footprint of a pad where spent fuel canisters would age or cool down before they are entombed in a maze of tunnels inside the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

very true...it irritates me when people grandstand "well I ride a bike everywhere...what's your excuse". Well, I live in Las Vegas, the North American capitol for pedestrian fatalities. Cars here aren't just transportation: they are armor.

Example: a clip from today's newspaper about a proposed bike path. The "bicylists' advocate" does come off as a bit arrogant, but note the driver's responses in the comment area below. Many are advocating outright violence against bikes because they get in the way.

Windows is a packaged, supposedly complete product that costs real money (a lot of it), is extremely widespread, and most importantly to your point, used by almost everyone in North America at some point in their lives

I was in Las Vegas recently and watched on of these experience maintenance. It ran Linux. Apparently lots of people use Linux that don't know it. Little better evidence can be offered than that legendary pillar of the FOSS community Volkswagon submitting a major module for the latest kernel release.

In short, although the Vista experience is horribly broken you could be having a linux experience and not even know it. Some people would even say that's the goal. If you have to know the branding on the software then you're interacting with the brand, not doing stuff you want to do.

The Area 51 talk is ok as long as it doesn't get too heavy into the black choppers that don't go whup, whup whup... in the night.

First, since he US Government controls vast areas of Nevada's innards, attributing any Sci/Tech weirdness in Nevada directly to Area 51 adds fuel to the disingenuousness which obfuscates rational UFO discussions.

As a near lifer Vegas resident who has been on extensive adventures in Nevada, I've seen many an unusual light in the sky which defied easy explanation, and several contrails in the air that were extraordinary, but it is wise to allow Occam's Razor to rule the day. Simply, the government tests new and secret projects extensively out in dem dere hills pardner. Get used to it, don't go overboard with alien absurdities.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Friday's cloudy weather made Bill O'Donnell (M.S., UNLV, 1995. Electrical Engineering Electrical gizmo builder for the Physics Dept) doubt the theory of static interference...

"Solar flares can produce and eject large numbers of charge particles, and usually the Earth's magnetic field deflects them before they enter the atmosphere," said chemistry and physics Professor Malcolm Nicol (Visiting Professor of Physics and Chemistry, Executive Director, UNLV High Pressure Sciences and Engineering Center )..."But if they are very large, they have been known to destroy the electronics systems in satellites and cause other problems down here."

This sort of rules out known natural causes, but the dense cloud cover may have been reflecting electronic game playing up and over the intervening mountains and down into the Las Vegas valley.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Paul Oei, an electronics engineer with the Los Angeles office of the FCC, said keyless entry systems operate on unlicensed frequencies. The devices can fail when they are near an antenna emitting high radio frequency energy...

he recalled hearing about an incident years ago in which garage-door openers stopped working in an area when Air Force One was nearby.

"Who knows what the military could be using at any given time?" he said.

Yes, who knows...but Mr. Bush's millstone in the War on Terrorism's hypocrisy as he stumbles into complexity, Pervez Musharraf, may have stymied an assasination attempt with a device similar to this.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org ...said military technology could easily be responsible for Friday's phenomenon. One such operation is jamming, which involves the release of electromagnetic energy to interfere with an enemy's radar detection capability...

Pike noted that particularly in Nevada, the military has a number of unacknowledged programs in jamming and radar and high-powered microwave weapons...

"The military is certainly capable of fibbing about these things," Pike said. "But, for the military to have done it, they would have to have seriously miscalculated the effects of some test."

Pike makes it sound like the chances of the government seriousl

Here in Clark County, Nevada, the very same Ms. Ferguson from the article was our elections supervisor at one time. She came in to the job, stayed just long enough to throw out all our old machines that had some kind of an audit trail and bought brand new totally electronic, un-auditable voting machines which violate state law from Sequoia Inc.

She only got the machines approved by the most ridiculous of explanations: A Printout of the memory card is just as good a audit trail as real ballots. Read about it here in our local paper. What did Ms. Ferguson do after leaving Clark County? Why she went to Santa Clara County in CA, where she stayed just long enough to throw out any auditable voting machines and replaced them with fully electronic voting machines from Sequoia.

After that, where did Ms. Ferguson go? Why she accepted a position as a Vice President... of Sequoia systems!

Do I think there is some wild conspiracy here? Nope. It's just a case of a political hack on the take, who doesn't care about the laws of the state that she is supposed to enforce.

Plus, I think the Slashdot crowd understands full well how when you have critical software apps that are closed source, you are essentially outsourcing control of your apps. So any county that has these fully electronic devices has outsourced election security to the low bidder. Egads.

The Whitehouse wouldn't have anything against Nevada would it?

Don't believe what you read in City Life...it's one of those left-wing "alternative" rags that they give away because they can't get anybody to pay for it. I'd recommend the Review-Journal for a more balanced view of what happens in Las Vegas.

As for me, I think Harry Reid screwed the pooch. Yucca Mountain has been inevitable since the passage of the Screw Nevada Bill in 1987. He should've worked toward getting something for the people of Nevada, along the lines of the fund established in Alaska when the oil pipeline was put in. Instead, he seems to think that he can bluster his way into stopping the dump. Instead of working to make sure there's an upside for Nevada, he's just about guaranteed that about all we'll be getting is everybody else's nuke waste. (The only upside I can see for that is if a method of transmutation is developed that would allow the buried waste to be retrieved and reprocessed.)

Rubbish. Whenever you find restrictive monopolies, you will always find they are backed up by the anti-capitalist forces of collectivist government.

When capitalism fails, it is usually the fault of government-worshiping Democrats and other leftist idiots who never saw a regulation they didn't like, in an unholy alliance with crooked businessmen who care not a whit about politics except insofar as they can use the sovereign power of government to run their competitors out of town.

Every monopoly is an argument for smashing some government agency to bits, and firing worthless regulators and parasitic bureaucrats by the tens of thousands.

The great pity is that the left - and nowhere more so than in the US - seem unable to produce a decent theory of politics - the theory of praxis as it was once called - that connects the frustrations of those who post these articles on /. with proposals to change the world.

Nor will they ever. Leftism and collectivism is the ideology of fools and children. It must be utterly destroyed and the powers of government undermined, whenever and however it can. Devil take the hindmost.

I am teaching my children to hate the government and all who propose its expansion. That's the only way anything will ever change.

Capitalism is still making us pay for the Soviet Union's experience of repression.

Yep. Still a ways to go yet, about 200 million human souls sacrificed on the altar of collectivism is a debt that 20th century government-loving idiocy is going to have a tough time paying off.

Poor, pitiful, pathetic Marxists see everything through the lens of the class struggle. They remind me of medieval scientists who thought that Aristotle had it all figured out fifteen hundred years previously. To them, all of science and medicine was mere commentary on Aristotle's theories, and as a result, reality passed them by and now we laugh at them for their ignorance.

You stupid Marxists are next. There are only a few of you ridiculous buffoons left, mostly on college campuses. Anyone who has ever met a payroll or owned company stock-- and that is more and more of the public every year-- knows you are totally full of shit. Your descendants will consider you on a par with Torquemada and the Salem witch burners.

-ccm

What happened was that his son. artbell jr (or whatever) had been molested by a teacher, who was sent away to jail for a very long time.

The idiot had his own small time talk show on shortwave (I think) Someone had sent the idiot a rumor that had it all backwards, accusing the talk show host father Art Bell of peodophilia. Art Bell had been trying to keep it quiet to protect his son, and eventually came forward with the information on the air, when the rumors got to heavy, and he had to file a law suit. Needless to say, the father was not pleased, hired the best of lean and hungry lawyers, and had at the jerk.

Now there are programs like Mailwasher that let you erase and bounce email before you download it. Of course, Unix admins have been able to do this since the dawn of time.

Having a computer does not teach math. It does not teach reading (pretty pictures), it does not teach writing. All it does is teach how to use that computer.

Test scores are dropping. Highschool graduates cannot parse a sentense. They cannot do arithmatic, they cannot write or spell. They cannot read latin, or do 90% of what a highschool graduate did a hundred years ago.

Nothing about having a computer educates, it just distracts.

Millionaires will rescue victims of government schools by Vin Suprynowicz is just one of his excellent diatribes on the complete failure of the American federal and state government educational disaster, what might be the largest single welfare industry on the planet.

Vin's Las Vegas Review-Journal archive has this years output, which will be updated in the next week or two to include another education expose' well worth the wait.

To put it bluntly, this purchase is not a mistake. It is a deliberate action to spend as much money on "education" as possible, and get the least effective return, guranteeing more money next year for more administrative and support staff to "do something" about the failing students.

The Alliance for the Separation of School and State has a lot more on the massive abuse of students and wealth that is going on, and only grows greater every day.

Bob-

If loving this man is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The local paper has some links in their copy of an AP story on this incident. HTH, and whoever's responsible ought to consider that his days are numbered.

Teachers Unions: No merit pay, no efficiency, no competence, just time served.

Funding by Failure: "They're doing well, they don't need any more money."

Funding by Force: A student, no matter how completely unsuited, is required to go because the school system is paid by number of students who are in the building. I was told, for instance, that if I didn't come to school they would put my mother in jail. How's that for motivation?

Massive Overhead: Administration costs continue to endlessly rise, while "test scores" fall, and "not enough teachers" is the hue and cry.

Why are home schooled kids so over-represented in spelling bee's and science fairs? Why is the average home schooled kids standard test scores 35 percentage points higher than average?

To a teacher, with rare exceptions, this is just a job. They get paid anyway. To the parent, this has a *reason*.

Private schools either do a good job, or loose paying customers. Paying customers also means they can GET PHD and guest lecturers, if the parents want them. Private schools, like the ones that Al Gore Jr. as well as most all of the rest of the children of those who make and set policy and budgets for "public schools", consistantly turn out better educated students.

I found a page with an 8th grade final exam from 1895. Read it and imagine having to take the same one yourself at that age. Would you have passed? Could you pass it NOW? Here it is, completed, so you can check yourself.

Want your children taught that creation is fact?
Want to ensure that your children are never taught that creation is fact?
The sword of forced and centrally planned policy cuts all ways, folks. It fails to provide service.

Bob-

Teachers Unions: No merit pay, no efficiency, no competence, just time served.

Funding by Failure: "They're doing well, they don't need any more money."

Funding by Force: A student, no matter how completely unsuited, is required to go because the school system is paid by number of students who are in the building. I was told, for instance, that if I didn't come to school they would put my mother in jail. How's that for motivation?

Massive Overhead: Administration costs continue to endlessly rise, while "test scores" fall, and "not enough teachers" is the hue and cry.

Why are home schooled kids so over-represented in spelling bee's and science fairs? Why is the average home schooled kids standard test scores 35 percentage points higher than average?

To a teacher, with rare exceptions, this is just a job. They get paid anyway. To the parent, this has a *reason*.

Private schools either do a good job, or loose paying customers. Paying customers also means they can GET PHD and guest lecturers, if the parents want them. Private schools, like the ones that Al Gore Jr. as well as most all of the rest of the children of those who make and set policy and budgets for "public schools", consistantly turn out better educated students.

I found a page with an 8th grade final exam from 1895. Read it and imagine having to take the same one yourself at that age. Would you have passed? Could you pass it NOW? Here it is, completed, so you can check yourself.

Want your children taught that creation is fact?
Want to ensure that your children are never taught that creation is fact?
The sword of forced and centrally planned policy cuts all ways, folks. It fails to provide service.

Bob-

You've provided a lot of links - tell me, are the dead tree news outlets saying the same?

Several of the links provided earlier were from newspapers. Here's the local paper's take on the matter (of course, since "local"=="Las Vegas", it follows that there'd be an article here):

http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jul-18-Wed-2001 /news/16563325.html

What about Television - where has the DMCA and the Sklyarov arrest been mentioned?

Can't say, as most TV news is slanted so far to the left I don't waste my time with it. Local TV news might've covered it, but I couldn't say one way or the other. (Actually, someone else posted a link to KTNV's website in one of the other Sklyarov threads here on /., so I guess the local TV news media have covered the matter.) The only TV news program I follow with any regularity is Fox News Sunday, and their website indicates they didn't cover this issue.

The Australian legislation makes is easier for gamblers to refuse to pay their offshore gambling debts. However, this scenario would play out in most jurisdictions even without the Australian-type laws.

One reason people use online casinos is because gambling is banned within reasonable commuting distance. However, gambling debts are generally not enforceable where gambling is banned. Diligent losers can refuse to pay their credit card bills attributed to loses in another jurisdiction. In some cases, they can cancel payment on checks written to pay debts as well.

Since most online gamblers inevitably must lose and yet cannot be required to pay, it would seem that the online gambling revenue model is fatally flawed.

Judges making stupid rulings like this, in total contempt and defiance of the Constitution that makes this country a Republic, not a Monarchy, need to leard to FEAR and respect the People they serve. They are in office as servants of the Law, the highest Law being the Constutution. The Law is not THEIR servant.

Judges today take after Humpty Dumpty. To them, the law means whatever they say it means, no more and no less. Consider this quote from the local paper today:

Thank goodness our judges, like those in California, no longer have to take an oath of office binding them to "protect and defend" a Constitution written by such men as John Jay. Think how inconvenient that would be.

Vin Suprynowicz, "The rights of juries take another hit," Las Vegas Review-Journal, 13 May 2001

(The rest of the column is recommended reading if you're interested in the rights of jurors to judge the law, as well as to apply it. These rights and others are under attack from the Men In Black.)

I don't know if anything to this effect has been posted thus far or not... I just moved to a little town right outside of Vegas, and according to what I've seen in the news, it is a felony to be caught with "devices" that "affect" the performance of a slot machine. Any winnings from such endeavours that are converted (from coins to dollars) in a casino is considered money laundering. Click here for an example of what I mean.

There are many horrors lurking in our homes and offices. Perusal of this article (text-only link here) could lead you to live out your life in a tent. However the "big, bad three" ( formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene) are largely scrubbed from the air by plants. The book referred to above looks at the most effective. You are correct in thinking that Chlorophytum comosum (Thunb.) Jaccques (The spider plant) is particularly useful. An important point is that plants are an effective, low-tech solution, self-replicating and aesthetically-pleasing - this beats expensive, quick-fix high-tech solutions any time.

It should come as no surprise that vascular plants do this so well as they have been cleaning earth's atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years (and much longer in the case of their predecessors).
- Derwen

"I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the United States does not recognize the Principality of Sealand,"
- Walter Deering, Miami special agent-in-charge of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

See also: Source of quote

I also believe that the censorship aspect is an important part of it. I mean the reason why American movies are censored in the first place is to comply with the will of our government. However, you shouldn't think that only the Republicans are respnsible for the current heavy censorship of American media, people like Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Ms. Tipper Gore are a big part of it too.

This is one of the reasons I vote Libertarian.

This article here paints a picture of COMDEX to be some kind of bachanalian orgy of geeks and strippers and prostitutes. And naturally the MAN wants to keep the kid down. Don't worry, kid, you'll be old enough for prostitutes next year.


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