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And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. Let the Spanish keep it, it's a shithole, we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, It's your money, not the government's money is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That's right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It's too easy, asshole, they're blue states. It's not your money, assholes, it's fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let's talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It's fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marria

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. Let the Spanish keep it, it's a shithole, we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, It's your money, not the government's money is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That's right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It's too easy, asshole, they're blue states. It's not your money, assholes, it's fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let's talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It's fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marria

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. Let the Spanish keep it, it's a shithole, we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, It's your money, not the government's money is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That's right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It's too easy, asshole, they're blue states. It's not your money, assholes, it's fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let's talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It's fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Y

The two most liberal counties in the state have the highest number of no-shows, and a turnout rate that was almost 10% lower than the state average? Hmm...I guess Dubya just didn't piss off the liberal city slickers enough to get them out to vote.

On the one hand, the rate of no-shows seems to correlate with population: the third highest number of no-shows was in the third most populous county (Hamilton). On the other hand, Hamilton had a higher-than-average turnout rate, and guess who they voted for? Hint: it's Cinncinati, which borders Kentucky.

This could be a completely legal, if unethical, tactic by Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to suppress the vote: there simply weren't enough voting machines. I arrived at the polls at 6:30AM, when they opened, and had to wait an hour to vote. Many people waited much longer, and many people simply left when they saw how long the lines were, or after waiting in the rain for a few hours. Curiously, you didn't heat about these problems in the Republican-dominated suburbs. Remember, Blackwell is the guy who refused to accept new registrations that weren't printed on bond paper until the courts slapped his wrist. According to a poll worker, voting machines are allocated according to turnout in the previous election, which means that last-minute voter drives are going to result in longer waits, but if those liberal counties really did register hundreds of thousands of new voters, how come lines were so long if the turnout rate was actually lower in those counties?

Note the San Jose Mercury News http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/sp ecial_packages/election2004/10091977.htm/ headline: "Despite long lines, voter turnout in Ohio not record breaking". And from the article: "The county just didn't plan on having a whole college to vote," said Sussman, who waited 10 hours to cast his vote for Kerry at 9 p.m., two and a half hours after the polls closed.

This also puts into perspective Blackwell's successful battle in the days before the election to prevent provisional ballots from being cast outside of one's own precinct. I suspect Blackwell knew there weren't nearly enough voting machines in certain precincts, and wanted to prevent voters from simply trotting to the next precinct to vote. For instance, in Republican-dominated Worthington, 10 minutes north of my precinct, there were no lines. The most clever thing about it is that it's not illegal, just unfair.

Meanwhile, if half of those 670,000 voters did actually show up at the polls, and if their votes tracked the actual results in those counties (Cleveland 66% for Kerry, Columbus 54%), that would have swung the election, since the difference in Ohio was around 136,000 votes.

Brushing aside conspiracy theories, it seems that blackboxvoting.org would do well to at least question how voting machines were allocated in Ohio. It wouldn't be too hard to look at voter turnout in the last election, and compare that with actual voting machine allocations. Who will bet me $1 that left-leaning precincts were short-shrifted?

The real reason they haven't found him yet is because he's in Pakistan, and U.S. troops can't currently go in there much (for various reasons).

So are you saying Bush is letting another nation get in the way of our national security? Isn't that the very same thing he's criticized Kerry of doing? Well, I guess it's a growing trend...

From the article:

On 21 October, the George W Bush website began using the services of a company called Akamai to ensure that the pages, videos and other content on its site reaches visitors.

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision was taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.

He said the site may see no reason to distribute content to people who will not be voting next week.

Managing traffic could also be a good way to ensure that the site stays working in the closing days of the election campaign.

And:

However, simply blocking non-US visitors also means that Americans overseas are barred too.

Ok, yeah, that's the ONE thing that might be pertinent, and might be arguable.

Otherwise, there's always this, and this, and this, and, um, the whole rest of the internet and every other available source of information in print, television, radio, and so on, on Earth.

This is a political campaign site with political campaign propaganda. And since there are still an extremely wide variety of ways to get at its content and information from outside the US, it's obviously not some kind of "international censorship". (C'mon, slashdot! I know you can come up with some crazy shit!) Even the Netcraft guy realizes that. It's not like the New York Times, or critical news information, is suddenly blocked. Hell, within the last week, they had to start using Akamai! That alone should prove to a normal person that there are clearly traffic concerns at play. They have little to no obligation to serve anyone outside of the US, with the statistically negligible exception of US citizens outside the US.

Ok, slashdot, let's see who can come up with the best off-the-wall looney conspiracy theories to twist this around as a malicious, underhanded tactic, and some kind of "proof" that Bush is evil incarnate! While you're at it, explain to me how it's right for the Guardian to encourage its UK readers, i.e., not US citizens, to start a letter writing and email campaign to Ohioans encouraging them to vote for John Kerry, or, better yet, calling for the assassination of the sitting US president! (Even as a "joke".)

In a regular column in The Guardian newspaper's Saturday TV listings magazine, Charlie Brooker described Bush in scathing terms, and concluded: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr., where are you now that we need you?"

3... 2... 1...

Go!

The mayor of berkeley does his own dirty work as well.

Excerpt from an earlier article

Q: You moved from Finland. How do you like living in Silicon Valley.

A: Some parts I love. I have a convertible. I will never ever move to a place where I can't drive a convertible. I like the dynamics. Sometimes it's sad how you go into a random restaurant and all the tables around you talk about technology. At the same time, it is nice to be where you understand the people. Genetically maybe not very homogenous. But perspective wise, it's a nice place to be. It's too crowded. It's too expensive.

My question now is for you guys living in or knowing about Portland, will it too rainy for Linus' convertible in Portland?

And it's not simply that GDS might allow access by others of files they shouldn't access. It's also that it causes files and other transactions to hang around longer than people think, due to the cache. For example, if you believe you've deleted a sensitive file or e-mail message, and even wiped it with one of several programs that can do this, you're wrong. The GDS cache still has the data. At the very least, this creates yet another place that data you thought was gone is still around (think personal info, future legal discovery processes, etc.).

Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News provided an additional view (reg req'd) yesterday. Sample quote:

Second, the software keeps its own copy of all your Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail messages -- even after you delete them from within Outlook or Outlook Express. A confidential company memo, in other words, will still pop up during Google searches after you've emptied the Deleted Items folder in Outlook.

This is a clear example of getting taxpayers to fund the RIAA's private war, Schultz said. (Wired)

Operation Digital Gridlock has resulted in the seizure of more than 40 terabytes of intellectual property being exchanged illegally over peer-to-peer networks since the effort began in August. (Information Week)

Intellectual property industries account for 6 per cent of the US gross domestic product, employ more than five million people, and contribute US$626 billion to the US economy, Mr Ashcroft said. (SMH)

Such theft costs American companies $250 billion per year, the report estimated. Sales of copyrighted materials alone accounted for 6 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product in 2002. Companies that produce films, music, books, software and other copyrighted material employed 4 percent of the nation's work force in 2002, the report said. (The Mercury Times)

Specifically, the report asks Congress to introduce legislation that would permit wiretaps to be used in investigating serious intellectual property offences and that would create a new crime of the importation of pirated products. (SMH)

The report also endorsed the rights of companies to compel Internet service providers to turn over the names of people who have traded copyright-protected items online. That power is included in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but has been challenged by companies that want to protect the identity of their subscribers. (Boston.com)

US Attorney Debra Yang said that intellectual property is lifeblood of south California region. This is an issue that has been of utter and utmost importance to our community here in Los Angeles, she said. (China View)

The task force proposed a dozen changes to rules governing criminal enforcement of intellectual property law and also called for the opening of five new anti-piracy offices across the United States. (news.com.au)

Dan Glickman, the new president of the Hollywood studios' influential lobbying body, the Motion Picture Association of America, applauded the aggressive initiatives aimed at protecting his industry. Piracy of intellectual property is a massive, global problem with far-reaching implications on the US economy, he said. In addition to hard goods piracy, which is rampant throughout the world, peer-to-peer networks that facilitate illegal file sharing are some of the most dangerous threats to copyright ownership today, he said. (news.com.au)

Ashcroft declined to comment on the Supreme Court's action, saying that his department might have to be involved in future, similar cases. But he defended the task force's recommendations. We believe people in the private sector have a responsibility to address these threats in the civil dimension as the law allows them and we have a responsibility to address these matters criminally, Ashcroft told The Associated Press in an interview. (The Mercury Times/AP)

The report also suggested expanding educational efforts in schools to prevent illegal file sharing. It also included principles to be adopted when evaluating pen

This is a clear example of getting taxpayers to fund the RIAA's private war, Schultz said. (Wired)

Operation Digital Gridlock has resulted in the seizure of more than 40 terabytes of intellectual property being exchanged illegally over peer-to-peer networks since the effort began in August. (Information Week)

Intellectual property industries account for 6 per cent of the US gross domestic product, employ more than five million people, and contribute US$626 billion to the US economy, Mr Ashcroft said. (SMH)

Such theft costs American companies $250 billion per year, the report estimated. Sales of copyrighted materials alone accounted for 6 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product in 2002. Companies that produce films, music, books, software and other copyrighted material employed 4 percent of the nation's work force in 2002, the report said. (The Mercury Times)

Specifically, the report asks Congress to introduce legislation that would permit wiretaps to be used in investigating serious intellectual property offences and that would create a new crime of the importation of pirated products. (SMH)

The report also endorsed the rights of companies to compel Internet service providers to turn over the names of people who have traded copyright-protected items online. That power is included in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but has been challenged by companies that want to protect the identity of their subscribers. (Boston.com)

US Attorney Debra Yang said that intellectual property is lifeblood of south California region. This is an issue that has been of utter and utmost importance to our community here in Los Angeles, she said. (China View)

The task force proposed a dozen changes to rules governing criminal enforcement of intellectual property law and also called for the opening of five new anti-piracy offices across the United States. (news.com.au)

Dan Glickman, the new president of the Hollywood studios' influential lobbying body, the Motion Picture Association of America, applauded the aggressive initiatives aimed at protecting his industry. Piracy of intellectual property is a massive, global problem with far-reaching implications on the US economy, he said. In addition to hard goods piracy, which is rampant throughout the world, peer-to-peer networks that facilitate illegal file sharing are some of the most dangerous threats to copyright ownership today, he said. (news.com.au)

Ashcroft declined to comment on the Supreme Court's action, saying that his department might have to be involved in future, similar cases. But he defended the task force's recommendations. We believe people in the private sector have a responsibility to address these threats in the civil dimension as the law allows them and we have a responsibility to address these matters criminally, Ashcroft told The Associated Press in an interview. (The Mercury Times/AP)

The report also suggested expanding educational efforts in schools to prevent illegal file sharing. It also included principles to be adopted when evaluating pen

Since it will have a G5 and (if I'm not mistaken) and probably something from ATi or nVidia, so we can assume that it will be transformable into a Mac clone without too much effort.

This assumes, first of all, that you believe the specs that leaked out a while back. Whether you choose to believe me or not, I know they were real at least at that time... which doesn't mean they haven't changed or won't change before the system is released. But for now, we'll assume those specs were/are correct and current.

The problem is, just because it has "a" G5 doesn't mean it's a Mac. It has more than "a" G5 if you go by those leaked specs, it has three G5's, which each handle specific tasks (for example, half of the processing power on one of them is used for the audio decoding). It also has a custom DirectX-compatible graphics chip which may or may not support other API's - I'll bet it won't. And it's got a completely unique memory architecure that takes inspiration from the GameCube's use of 1T-SRAM as a sort of "in-between" cache.

Also, MS told game developers at the same meeting these specs came from not to expect a hard drive built into the system. It may be available as an option, but it won't be built into the system. I assume this is a) to save on costs, and b) to possibly discourage modding - at least making it a little harder and/or more expensive. But that's another barrier - there may not be a hard drive available at all at launch.

The Xbox 2 will be more proprietary than the current Xbox. The current model was designed very quickly to get something out there as fast as possible - hence its similarity to current PC's. The next Xbox has had a lot more time put into its design and will not be very similar to either PC's or Macs. It's true that there's nothing very proprietary about the Mac other than the G5, but there's nothing very similar about the Xbox 2 to the Mac except the G5.

(Hint: it's not a Democratic conspiracy against him.) Take a look at this: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/wo rld/9627161.htm?1c Bush won by 537 votes in Flordia. Nader got over 97,000 votes in Flordia. Don't tell me Democrats will do everything in their power to keep him on off the ballot. Might I also say that Republicans have been "supporting" Nader and trying to keep him on the ballot.

The polarization is making it difficult to talk about any remotely political topics in a balanced way to find solutions or even common ground. Take, for example, education (soul-sucking registration required).

After reading your comment I did a quick search in Google News and found this article.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/94 21036.htm?1c
The ironic thing about the article is it recommends DC field a basketball team.

Also, if you want more information on Puerto Rico you can go to this link.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Puerto_Rico

Didn't you mean:

Now, Solaris on an XServe [apple.com]... That makes NO sense... Server class hardware that doesn't suck [AMD/Sun serrvers]], yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg [apple.com], running perhaps the best multiprocessor Unix ever [BSD]... Mmmmm.

I'd take BSD running on an Ultrasparc any day over Solaris running on a xserv.

Topix.net also classifies all the news into 150,000 categories including 30,000 local pages with every city and town in the US.

Both Topix.net and Yahoo News have RSS/XML feeds as well.

Microsoft is using moreover.com to supply its news (As mentioned in the Mercury News Merc Article)

-AS

The education system as a whole needs a huge cleansing. We spend more per student than any other country in the world.

Bush, et al, have really nothing to do with the problems in our education system, even though groups like the NEA would like you to believe otherwise.

He's all for destroying citizens' personal computers as well if they do naughty things like swap copyrighted materials. Link

In fact, before HP decided to join with Apple and create the blue smurfPod, HP was planing on selling music jointly with Napster. Napster was counting on this deal to boost its sales to new levels. When the deal was cut, Napster was in trouble, and is still strugling.

Try a Google News Search:

San Jose Mercury News (from AP)

Los Angeles Times

And many others... looks legit to me.

The average WiFi user was tech savvy too, back when only us computer geeks used it.

Here's a counter-example. Two years ago, the San Jose Mercury published this article by one of the regular tech reviewers. He was unable to get his WiFi setup to work until a tech came over and turned off his firewall. Problem solved; finesse with a sledge hammer. His system's probably a slag heap by now with all of the extra use it's gotten.

The Xbox 2 specs have already been leaked. 3 G5 chips, no hard drive, etc. It's not even backwards compatible with the Xbox. That's not to say it won't have some sort of media center features. But it ain't a PC in console clothes like the Xbox is.

Oh, Boohoo! ;-(
Are you upset because Microsoft is using stuff
to much associated with Apple for you taste?

Rumor or not, I don't know. But apparently, this guy got fired over it.

So are we gonna have Windows running on the PowerPC, or will the Xbox 2 be running Mac OS X?

XBox 2 SDK released on PowerMac G5s

XBox 2 to sport 3 64-bit IBM Chips

Microsoft leaks details about XBox Next

XBox 2 innards laid bare on web

Just think of the implications of Microsoft producing a PowerPC based PC...

Thanks for telling us about the link without providing the link. Do-it-yourself ringtone software encroaching on potential profits, some record labels say.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/busines s/technology/7070723.htm?1c

Fake security - real control. This is to keep people IN - not out.... "In Soviet America, Passport stamps You!"

The parent got modded funny for the Soviet Russia joke; but he should be getting modded Insightful for pointing out the real reason from these new passports.

Like me expand a bit on his insight: these biometric passports are the thin edge -- a proof of concept, if you will -- of mandatory National ID cards.

Indeed, Homeland Security will point out stories, like the one posted above about the 88 illegal immigrants taking a domestic flight from California to New Jersey and the general ability if illegals to bypass our borders, as evidence that we will need a "fool-proof" way of ascertaining identity not only at the borders but inside the United States.

And since the biometric passport will by then have been, however reluctantly, accepted, the government will apply the same technology to National ID cards.

Of course, a National ID card is only useful if it's checked, so expect to see uniformed men asking you to present it: "Your papers, Citizen!". This will also have the useful -- for the government -- side effect of getting the citizenry used to seeing and docilely taking orders from uniformed "security" officers; you can already see that happening in airports and government buildings, where we've all learned to shut-up and passively follow orders from any guy with three days of training and a badge, on penalty of delay, harassment or arrest.

(This acclimation to the presence of soldiers as quasi law-enforcement, incidentally, is one of the requirements Army War College grad Charles Dunlap posits for "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", co-winner in 1992 of the of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1991-92 Strategy Essay Competition -- in other words, it's not a fringe tin-foil hat screed.)

Expect also that the government will quickly thereafter require presentation of the National ID for transactions that "terra'ists use", like banking or buying plane and train tickets, similar to the "Know Your Customer" requirements of the "Patriot" Act. A little way down the road, expect that the government will expanded the "significant economic activity" to encompass all credit card purchases -- and perhaps using the fig leaf of "preventing (economic) identity theft", will require your National ID Card be presented for all credit card purchases.

At that point, you'll either have to present you National ID Card several times a day, or remove yourself from "the grid" entirely. I can think of few ways better to suppress dissent than letting anyone contemplating it know that their movements can be tracked with this sort of granularity: "why did you use the ATM machine a block from the People Against Surveillance meeting, Citizen? are you a member of this anti-Patriotic organization"?

Now, some will accuse me of wearing my tin-foil hat too tight: I'll refer them to the subpoenaing of protest groups' membership records (dropped only after unfavorable publicity), the CAPPS II Airline screening and the subpoenaing of women's medical records of their abortions (this link from BusinessWeek, of all places, the FBI investigation of Freedom of Information act requests, and the Federal prosecution -- even after state charges were thrown out of court -- of peaceful protestors against Bush. And there are, unfortunately, many many more examples of the current administration supressing dissent -- in fact, if you're reading this, please reply with links to more of these cases.

From

CNN:
"A draft of the new domestic security bill Ashcroft is seeking, published by a nonprofit government watchdog group in February, indicates that among other things, it would prohibit disclosure of information regarding people detained as terrorist suspects and prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from distributing "worst-case scenario" information to the public about a nearby private company's use of chemicals.
In addition, the measure would create a DNA database of "suspected terrorists;" force suspects to prove why they should be released on bail, rather than have the prosecution prove why they should be held; and allow the deportation of U.S. citizens who become members of or help terrorist groups."

The Patriot act, linked with the Homeland Security Act, has gutted the Freedom of Information Act.

From

Wired News Dec. 02, 2002
"One of the most egregious and potentially dangerous of these travesties is the Homeland Security Act's creation of new and very broad exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act. Businesses now have a new way to evade liability for safety violations, hazards to consumers and other abuses. They need merely report the information about their behavior -- even totally unclassified activities -- to the federal government, and claim it's related to homeland security. In the parlance of the Homeland Security Act, they declare the data to be "CII," or Critical Infrastructure Information."

In other News from the press: everything is classified now, and won't be released anytime soon. (See "Amendment To Executive Order No. 12958")
How much is this being used now?

Local News
"Federal agents sought 1,727 warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic eavesdropping and physical searches last year, according to a Justice Department filing with Congress. Just four applications were rejected, and two of those were later revised and approved. The number of so-called FISA warrants jumped by 500 from 2002 and has almost doubled since 2001, when 934 applications were approved."
"By comparison, there were 1,442 wiretap petitions in federal and state courts for crimes like drugs and racketeering, according to a separate report from the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts."

How much abuse has been identified?

Inspector general's report on Patriot act abuses:
( They *only* found 34 *credible* cases in the 272 complaints. But please remember, it's all secret and there is no public oversight.)
The ACLU issued a report on how the Patriot Act is actually being used. Link Here.
The Migration Policy Institute says:
'Moreover, among those detained (and of the 1,200, the MPI could only identify a third) were "persistent violations of due p

The fact that game production costs are now approaching Hollywood proportions isn't really news to anyone who follows the industry. What is news and what is different here is how Shane Kim approaches game investment and development, and how that directly affects quality and innovation in games.

Laying off 200 (presumably) talented game developers and alienating some of those that remain seems counterintuitive to producing high-quality games, but on paper I'm sure it looks like a good financial move for a Microsoft division that is hemorrhaging cash like there is no tomorrow.

Here's the original post, highlighting comments from Blue Fang's president that expresses some concerns.

Microsoft Game Studios' New GM Shane Kim Speaks

Mercury News' Dean Takahashi profiles and interviews Shane Kim, Microsoft Game Studios' new General Manager. Among his first acts as GM, Kim killed Microsoft's entire XSN sports line and cut the number of developers from 1200 to 1000, leaving some developers 'privately grumbling that Microsoft has lost its way.' Kim has taken a more conservative, business-oriented approach than predecessor Ed Fries, funding sequels to games like Project Gotham Racing and Halo (Xbox) saying, 'This is about us growing up ... At the end of the day we'll have more quality.' But others like Blue Fang's Hank Howie have reservations: 'I wonder how innovative new ideas are going to get funded if everyone is being cautious and funding sequels.' Mirror at Mercury News.

Shelley also told reporters at a press conference in Sacramento that he urged the state Attorney General to pursue criminal and civil charges against Diebold for installing voting machines that had not been certified by the state and then misleading government officials.

The poster was making a joke.

It would have been funnier if he said that it wouldn't have made it past the ALISO VIEJO city council!

"Why do programmers confuse Arbor day and KWanza?"!!!

Your citation really isn't granular enough IMNSHO. While it does state what you are saying, they do not present any signifigant evidence of their statements. It is one thing to say that the US has the highest percentage of prison populace, but without comparable and citable figures from other industrialized nations we have no way of comparing and thus verifying the veracity of their claims. Understand that I am not saying they are wrong, meely untennable in their present condition. The best citation I could come up with in a short time is still not very good U.S. prisoner rate leads world. Other sites I found claimed other locals, so I would still cal the matter in dispute.

More on this at Groklaw and the Mercury News

"BayStar Capital Management LLC believes SCO needs to hire executives with more savvy about intellectual property cases and spend less money on its Unix products, BayStar spokesman Bob McGrath said Wednesday."

"SCO's chief executive is Darl McBride, whose cash compensation totaled $986,047 in the company's fiscal year ending last October. That pay package troubled BayStar, McGrath said, given SCO's small size - the company has annual revenue of $79 million and about 300 employees."

Baystar may finally be the one's to shut oldSCO's mouth for us so that IBM can finish the execution cleanly

Nurse Ripples: "Dr, what is Gonzo doing?"

Doctor: "Gonzo Gates likes to work off steam firing the land shark gun down the hospital hallways. Keeps him from hitting the bottle again.

This story has also been covered on The Mercury News:

"By the end of the day, FlashMob was a partial success. The crew managed to get 256 computers working together at almost half the speed required for the top 500 status."

If this was the first attempt of breaking this record, I reckon it will be a matter of weeks or even days that this is achieved.

This story has also been covered on The Mercury News:

"By the end of the day, FlashMob was a partial success. The crew managed to get 256 computers working together at almost half the speed required for the top 500 status."

If this was the first attempt of breaking this record, I reckon it will be a matter of weeks or even days that this is achieved.

But this one from Mercury News does not.

This coming from the figurehead of a company that has lost close to $2 billion "selling" hardware.

The hardware will be free and programming will be visual memes belong next to the we will be driving flying cars by 1999 and aliens are among us memes of times past. They sound cool, and anyone can shut their eyes and dream pretty things with them, but they are still ridiculous.

Everything has a cost, in money, labor, thought, design, and plain old hard work. If a company needs software that doesn't yet exist, or serious customization of existing software, it's hard to believe that it will stop paying people to hand-design, hand-build, and hand-optimize these systems to maximize profit. It is equally hard to believe that commercially viable visual programming tools can be made so fine grained as to be competitive in power and versatility with conventional programming.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7979543 .htm

The only problem was that those starving were either disfavored ethnic minorities/races or innocent civilians living in territory occupied by anti-government guerilla. Food was a weapon, nothing more. The same story continues today.

"The hypersonic aircraft, a cross between a jet and a rocket, was dropped from the wing of a modified B-52 bomber, boosted by an auxiliary rocket to an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet (30,000 meters) and flew on its own power for 10 seconds, said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"After the 10-second test firing, the X-43A glided through the atmosphere conducting a series of aerodynamic maneuvers for about six minutes before plunging into the Pacific Ocean, as planned."

Channel News Asia: Experimental hypersonic aircraft breaks world speed record, flies at Mach 7

"A minute before 2 p.m., the craft was dropped from 40,000 feet. A few seconds later, the rocket flared, boosting the jet skyward on a streak of flame and light. At about 100,000 feet, the rocket was dropped away.

"The scramjet then took over, using up about two pounds of gaseous hydrogen fuel before it glided and then plunged into the Pacific Ocean about 400 miles off the California coast."

Mercury News: Preliminary data shows NASA jet streaked 5,000 mph in test flight

Check out Dan Gillmor's tongue-in-cheek missive about the recent European ruling.

The problem isn't a lack of trained and educated people as recent reports from the IEEE showing increased unemployment demonstrate.

The problem is a lack of trained and educated people willing to work for minimum wage.

Your repeating industry propaganda uncritically serves nobody except your advertisers. We expect better from Wired News.

When I tried to send this to Wired News via their contact form, the above is part of 1 of the 12 bounce messages I sent. Perhaps Wired News needs some trained and educated people to run their own computer systems. Before people start asking questions about the competence of Wired News to address technological issues. Of course, one doesn't have to have competent reporters willing to do research if their news source is recycled corporate press releases.

The article itself is just pro-outsourcing spin control. The essential industry complaint is that nobody in the USA is stupid enough to put 4 years into getting a degree that will entitle its owner to a minimum wage gig. If US companies actually want kids to study high tech, they will provide a reasonable assurance that middle-class jobs will be available for kids who study technology when they graduate from college. That's all they have to do. Instead, they are pushing college kids out of technology fields by doing the opposite. The kind of bullshit reassurances they're getting from people like Bill Gates, whose encouraging words can be translated to "Go to school and get your degree, we'll cherry-pick the best 5% of you and the rest of you have wasted tens of thousands of dollars and hours in vain pursuit of a degree which will entitle you to flip burgers" are not going to be bought by anyone smart enough to get a tech degree to begin with.

However, the best attack on outsourcing is that it is indeed a high-risk strategy. All we generally hear about from the mass media and business magazines are the "good news" stories about how wonderful it is and how it's a competitive necessity. Here are some stories about outsourcing gone bad. Some of the companies discussed in the collection of articles this links to. . . are no longer with us and there's no question that their decision to outsource was responsible. It is apparent that outsourcing is being pushed without due diligence and often without regard for long-term consequences even to the companies whose investors are supposed to profit from this.

if the intelligence that Bush got also said they existed, and Bush
repeated this, as he did.. is he really lying? Sure, but he didn't fabricate
the lie, he just went on the intelligent his spooks got wrong.

Bush is no great leader, but if US intelligence can't even get shit right,
how can he relay the 'truth'?

"US intelligence" didn't get it factually correct because under the careful supervision of The White House through Cheney and the Office of Special Plans among others, "US intellegence" was never meant to get it factually correct. They were tasked with massaging any available data to fit The White House's preconcieved view-point that Iraq was a serious threat to the security of the United States. At the level of The White House, any data which confilicted with that view-point was systematically changed, deemphasized, discarded, or sent back to the CIA to be reevaluated.

This was done in the same general manner as so-called Creation Science[sic] attempts to massage data to support their preconcieved viewpoint that the Earth is relatively young and was created by their god, or their preconcieved viewpoint that evolution is a lie. In the cases of how both The White House and Creation Science[sic] adherents selectively pick and discard data it is the outcome which matters, not the facts. The facts, being inconvienent to them, have nothing to do with it.

More BT fandom: last night Bram Cohen won Wired Mag's Rave award for software designer of the year. Here's one of the news reports. He was in SF to receive the award.

You're kidding right? You do understand that congress votes to approve the budget and the bastards managed to work their own pet projects.

Isn't that quote from the movie Demolition Man? The some one that mentions Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming president after pushing through a to allow foreign-persons to hold that office?

Some may chalk this up to coincidence, but I see two possible conclusions: either the writer was a psychic or the Hollywood illuminati really DO dictate the flow of modern history! Since more and more movie studios are using linux, I think it's clear that Hollywood has already made up their mind on the SCO issue.

I, for one, welcome our new foreign-born, taco-shilling, linux-using overlords.

Please note: tounge was firmly implanted in cheek while writing this post. Thank you.

Is it just me or does that bottom image mean the land shark gun will be making an appearance?

I hacked mercurynews.com's photo display window so that the only text it shows for the photo captions is "myText"