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Now they need to do a study on those of us who run on caffeine...

Dude, they already did: "Drinking coffee cuts alcohol's harmful effects"

Now all three of my bad habits have a purpose! W00T!!!

It's unsurprising that Bing would reflect a Microsoft centric view - Microsoft employees wrote it and Microsoft employees were the first to test its algorithms. It probably was seeded on Microsoft sites and MS content probably gets extra positive modifiers, including things like Microsoft's MSDN, Blogs, etc. Google has been working with a lot more shares of the search engine pool and for a longer time, so theoretically, they are able to refine their processes for indexing and searching better. Also, it's 80-90% of Google's business, whereas Microsoft has several other business units making money.

Microsoft going after Ad revenue has more avenues such as XBox 360 and Zune HD and Windows Mobile and Hotmail and MSN also it has partnerships with Yahoo and Facebook. Google has YouTube and GMail and Google Apps and it has the AdSense platform and Blogger and Orkut.

Microsoft does have more resources. Obviously, the results will reflect what Microsoft spends its resources on, and Microsoft has indicated publicly that this is an area it will continue to invest resources on until it wins, and it apparently is winning market share at the moment.

Microsoft information from http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport?Symbol=US:MSFT
Employees: 93,000
Last 12M Sales: $58.4B
Income: $14.6B

Google information from http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport?Symbol=US:GOOG
Employees: 19,786
Last 12M Sales: $22.3B
Income: $4.6B

It's unsurprising that Bing would reflect a Microsoft centric view - Microsoft employees wrote it and Microsoft employees were the first to test its algorithms. It probably was seeded on Microsoft sites and MS content probably gets extra positive modifiers, including things like Microsoft's MSDN, Blogs, etc. Google has been working with a lot more shares of the search engine pool and for a longer time, so theoretically, they are able to refine their processes for indexing and searching better. Also, it's 80-90% of Google's business, whereas Microsoft has several other business units making money.

Microsoft going after Ad revenue has more avenues such as XBox 360 and Zune HD and Windows Mobile and Hotmail and MSN also it has partnerships with Yahoo and Facebook. Google has YouTube and GMail and Google Apps and it has the AdSense platform and Blogger and Orkut.

Microsoft does have more resources. Obviously, the results will reflect what Microsoft spends its resources on, and Microsoft has indicated publicly that this is an area it will continue to invest resources on until it wins, and it apparently is winning market share at the moment.

Microsoft information from http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport?Symbol=US:MSFT
Employees: 93,000
Last 12M Sales: $58.4B
Income: $14.6B

Google information from http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport?Symbol=US:GOOG
Employees: 19,786
Last 12M Sales: $22.3B
Income: $4.6B

The accepted submission on this story was pretty good, although here's the one I wrote up, which has a few more relevant links. In particular, the first link, to an article by Alan Boyle on MSNBC, is probably the best summary of this I've seen so far:

NASA Begins Commercial Crew Initiative

NASA is using an initial $50M to 'stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities.' NASA originally planned to use $150M, which was blocked by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) until it was largely redirected to the ~$35B Ares rocket program based at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO) will reward multiple competitive contracts, with the goals of promoting job growth, lowering the cost of spaceflight, and helping reduce the post-Shuttle gap in US human spaceflight capability.

See, you just can't help but beat that dead horse, can you? Did I claim that the Republicans were any better?

Yes, when you said this: "I was specifically referring to was the spend spend spend attitude that is personified by the Democratic Party in the United States." This sentence only makes sense if you think the Republicans are better. If you think that both parties are bad, then say so. Don't whine when people judge you on the words you write instead of reading your mind (and I'm not the only one who read your words this way, so it's not me who is the problem).

Did I even claim to be a Republican or to sympathize with them on any particular issue? Why are you so bound and determined to change the topic of conversation to the party that isn't in power right now?

They have been out of power for a very short time, after 8 years of making policy. Obama has put Reps in his cabinet, so they share part of the responsibility. They are still a factor in congress (with the democrats having a very slim filibuster-proof majority). You can't just ignore them, especially since your criticisms of the Democrats might drive people to the Republicans, which won't solve anything.

Does it bother you when someone points out that the Democrats picking right up where GWB left off and driving our financial bus over the cliff?

Yes, because it is unfair. You cannot turn a supertanker on a dime. During a recession, the first priority for the government is to appear reliable and stable. You cannot simply change fiscal policy drastically, without risking major panic. Also, it diverts attention away from the bipartisan corruption and foolishness.

That only happened because he had a GOP Congress to contend with. I think I'd like Obama a lot more if the GOP had control of Congress. Divided Government seems to be the only thing that keeps spending in Washington under control.

Obama reached out to the GOP. Did they demand less spending? No. They wanted lowered taxes (a very ineffective way to combat a crisis, since many people will put the money in the bank). The consensus in Washington is that there needs to be spending to fight the recession (as has always been the case during a recession, since politicians started believing in Keynes after the Great Depression).

Bullshit. The vast majority of Obama's spending is not stimulative in any sense of the word. The "stimulus plan" was a bill loaded up with every bit of pork that the Democrats have been saving up over the years. With few exceptions (cash for clunkers being the one everybody is talking about today) most of his spending has zero to do with the economic recovery that is now under way. Hell most of the money hasn't even been spent yet. And now they are making rumblings about needing a second "stimulus"! Gotta love it.

No, it's not. A lot of money goes to tax cuts and the states, which are not pork. The rest of the bill does have some pork, but by Washington standards, it is very little. You are just parroting right-wing talking points. And of course the money cannot be spend immediately. It always takes time to start up projects, especially if the money is not earmarked.

Imagine that -- limiting my "world-view" to America during a discussion about American politics. Go figure!

But the discussion wasn't about American politics. It was about liberalism until your post where you started talking about the Democrats and the Republicans.

When those people are running for a seat in the US Congress then I'll care about the political platform they stand for. Until then it's just more redirection by someone who is unwilling to have a candid discussion about the US Democratic Party and American liberalism.

Why would I let you hijack this thread and reduce it to a

Don't forget Pizza Hut, rebranding some of it's stores "The Hut".

"The new "Hut" stores will be more than simply places to place a delivery order, according to MediaWeek. They will include televisions that broadcast programs such as "Wheel of Fortune" and "Entertainment Tonight."

Ahh Entertainment Tonight, me and my friends haven't missed an episode in years. Laugh.

Well,

It almost sounds like the same marketing folks that told Pizza Hut to take the 'Pizza' out of their name and just call it "The Hut". Something about them selling Pasta and stuff there too now.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/pizza-hut-changes-its-name.aspx?GT1=33009

So who's next "The Depot" you could never actually buy a 'Home' there anyway. Ever buy an Olive at Olive Garden, nope, there ya go "The Garden" it is.

They should merge with "The Hut" so you could now get your 2nd rate electronics and pizza all under the same roof!

that would be: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18767315/

I get tense whenever I come across this kind of CYA posturing which tends to invoke more double standards than a house of mirrors.

More charges may be filed in HP case

Ousted Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and former ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker surrendered, were booked and released Thursday, a day after being charged -- along with three private investigators -- with felonies for their roles in HP's spying scandal.

Ethics officer dragged off in handcuffs, did it really hurt HP's business? What was it all about? It was about keeping their dirty laundry behind closed doors, no matter how appalling or borderline illegal.

I'm more of a KTB than a CYA. KTB = kill the bastards

CentOS is an example of "life happens". Interesting how many uninformed people who just caught their first whiff of this immediately chime in to explain that they should have tried harder to keep a lid on this, without even checking that maybe this box already had a tick mark.

The underlying assumption is that making an effort to keep a scandal behind closed doors will always work if the people involved warrant respect. Similar to the belief system of the HP executives. In their quest not to be damned by their knee-jerk shareholders for not trying hard enough to bung the leak, they went all the way to extra-legal.

I'm tremendously unimpressed by people who maintain their social standing by undermining the credibility of our public institutions.

Fundamentally, most support contracts are a tax on social insecurity. Am I the only person on slashdot with a vastly better track record at debugging failed software on my own steam than getting assistance over a telephone support hot-line?

I've had a few excellent external support experiences. On the other hand, in the time it takes to fight through the telephone support system of a typical company to a person who actually knows something I could have reversed engineered the antikythera.

Or in the case of HP, when one of their printer drivers made a friend's Windows 2000 machine unbootable, and their driver uninstaller refused to run under safe mode because it demanded a higher screen resolution that safe-mode VGA, and then my note about this on their support website (which took me 15 minutes to compose) returned "404 not found" after I pressed submit. So much for big, redundant iron. The dudes can't even keep their customer-support web server running (for customer_type==peon). Nothing screams "we care" like "404 not found".

That incident with HP cost me half a day of my life. End result of my support escalation: "404 corporation doesn't give a damn".

I once spent half a day debugging an obscure failure of EAccelerator in which tried dozens of Apache settings, ended up hand compiling, and then ended up running the whole thing under strace, finally filing a bug report which was incorporated upstream.

Which of those two experiences do you think I'm willing to repeat? Which of those experiences made me feel lower than an earth-worm? Which of those experiences made me feel like a useful member of the human race?

The most interesting property of the CYA reflex is how quickly and thoroughly it vaporises irrelevant considerations such as life quality.

The human brain was designed with a kill-switch on life quality. That's an amazing artifact from six million years of evolution under the parameters of nasty, brutish, and short. And still we marvel at the human capacity for genocide. Our CYA reflex is not the main player in this, but if you follow the wiring, I'm sure it's highly interconnected with the culpable wetware.

Author Ursula K. Le Guin cares. Author Justine Larbalestier cares.

Except for pseudo-political-correct pathetic people who can't look beyond it.

If I make a game in some post-apocalyptic Texas-like desert, of course you will see massively more Rob Zombies than Mahatma Gandhis. And actually intelligent people know that this has nothing to to with genders or ethnics.

The best zombie movie of all time, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, features a black male lead that at no point ever acts "gangsta." You'd be hard pressed to find that today. With the notable exception of the ever bankable Will Smith, black actors are either a variation of ghetto-thugs/angry-black-men, or magical-negros. (Morgan Freeman being the most prominent example.)

When I hire the best 20 people I can get for the job, I do not care if all 20 of them are white conservative males in their mid-50s, or half-Bantu half-grizzly half-swine-flu-victim-zombie girlie midgets in pink snake skin dresses. That's what it being irrelevant means. :)

Race or gender quotas are really disguised racism. It's just the "other extreme" of the full circle. ;) (Yeah, that really describes it very well.)

This isn't a fair comparison. You're not placing an ad and then filling a position from some semi-random sample. You're inventing the position, the employee, and the sample of potential employees. Unless you have a random character generator, there's no way to do this without letting your own experiences and biases shape your decision. That is, there is no objective standard for you use/hide-behind when creating fiction.

It's easy to say, "[just] look beyond it" when it's your ethnicity that's over represented. No one is arguing for quotas, but there is a desire to see people that look like yourself being portrayed heroically.

Gears of War surprised me when it actually had an Asian male as the squad leader, right up until he gets killed, and then the white guy takes the lead, and his black sidekick explains the ways of the space ghetto to him. Remember Daikatana, and how all the non-whites were stereotypes? The stupid fake accents. The stupid models. The whole thing was like a damn Charlie Chan movie. (Search Youtube if you don't believe me.) Look at the games made today. The black character is some super athletic jive talking "gangsta nigga". The Asian is inevitably the erotic assassin love interest of the white male lead.

Is this the game studios' fault? Well, they're the one making the games with their own free will. Honestly, I think it's unintentional. The game designers are white, and so are the execs. They unconsciously make the games look like themselves, and consciously make the games look like television and movies, which has a long history of institutional racism. While story goes that Jews run Hollywood, the fact is that many actors and execs changed their names to pass for white anglo-saxon protestants. (Kirk Douglas's name is really Issur Danielovitch Demsky. The Sheens are really the Estevezes. Even Jon Stewart was Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. Just to name a few.) Why is everyone on television and movies white? There's the idea that audiences won't go for non-white characters, and so by and far whites get leads, non-whites get supporting roles. Then paradoxically those with minority leads, are either not promoted heavily (because of the belief that the work is already doomed to failure), or they're little more than minstrel shows. ("We're going for the 'urban' audience!") Even when stories do have nonwhite leads, they're frequently "white washed." SciFi's production of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea changed the ethnicities of all the characters. The new book Liar, about a black girl, has white girl on the cover. Should this matter? In a perfect post-racial worl

I actually think that's all irrelevant; markets depend on rational actors and that's not what we've got.

It's never what we've got. :P It's one of the reasons economics is so screwy when you try to make it into an applied science.

Their competitors (that sell you weightless flight) call their ship a plane, and don't dubiously claim you were in space. Other than that, it looks like the same product to me. Do those differences make it worth 40X as much money? Some people think so, but I suspect they are the same ones who buy flights before the ship exists.

They call their planes planes because they're planes not ships of either the rocket- or space- variety. How high can they go? The world altitude record for an air-breathing craft is 37km. Personally, I see a huge difference between that and 100km, between this and this.

I predict they'll drop the price unless they just go bankrupt too fast to get the chance.

Well, if they aren't bankrupt, they've already made it clear they plan to drop the price, so I'm predicting your prediction comes true even if for different reasons.

It needs to go through a (lengthy, expensive) requalification process to fly after 2010 due to a Columbia Accident Investigation Board decision. That's the usual explanation for not flying it past 2010. (Source - could not find a direct quote from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board)

There's been buzz this week about the labels having finally persuaded Apple to offer a digitally-distributed "album" including liner notes, videos, ring tones, etc.

So if you're the labels, you create the digital package, let Apple (and presumably others, either right away or down the line) distribute a gazillion copies at no incremental cost to you... and you ship a container-load of CDs to WalMart for people who're still using 25-year-old technology.

Looks like they're just preparing for the shift away from rotating-spindle physical media. :)

In Alaska, Maryland, North Carolina and Ohio, vehicles can drive in the left lane so long as they're moving at the speed limit.

Interesting read on the topic.

If there is wide open space to my right and I have no fear of getting stuck behind 18 wheelers going 55, I'll move over. But otherwise, you're just going to have to be patient that you can only go 10 over the posted speed limit :)

"Give it to me straight, doc."

"Well, the good news is you'll regain full function of your legs. The bad news is the only guy you'll feel comfortable hanging out with is Paul Karason."

Finally the blue man won't be singing the bluez all alone

Levi might not be finding their next ad campaign on Facebook, but Virgin Mobile tried it on Flickr.

Sure, it was technically permissible under the license given, but to do so without even dropping in an email mentioning it is not exactly courteous.

According to the article, in order to charge the car in 10 minutes, you need 356 volts at 1000 amps. This gives a total energy of about 60kWh. Assuming 10 cents per kWh, the total refill would cost 6$. With a range of about 320 km, that would be about 53 km/$, or 33 miles per dollar.

According to this site, the Toyota Prius gets just 15 miles per dollar.

Teaching cell phone safety to the public is about as likely to happen as someone winning the lottery jackpot 37 times in a row by finding discarded tickets in the street.

Here is some Evidence ?

I'm a nerd, not a salesman. You're still talking about selling products, I'm talking about the general good. IBM's profits don't help society; the only segment of society IBM cares abdout is IBM's stockholders.

The reasons for your misconceptions do not make them right. IBM's concern is to the society in which it sells and has to reconcile that with the stock holders. IF IBM were to forget about the society in general, or at least their market segment, they would go out of business because there is enough competition to over take them when society turns against them. Now, you do no need to be a business major to see that going out of business is not in the interest of the stockholders.

Your argument doesn't stand up in the face of the poison peanut butter last year, or all the other poison food sold (I'm talking salmonella and e-coli, not WMDs)

Silly boy, don't confuse results with intent and don't confuse the actions of one with many. First of all, neither company knew it was poisoning people with it's food. They were completely oblivious until after the fact and they all stop selling the contaminated products. Second, you are not even considering the outcome, tomatoes were banned for a while, so was spinach. What possible benefit to the share holders could no being able to sell a perishable product bring about? What possible benefit to the share holders can the massive lawsuits over the even have to the shareholders. If you look, you will find that the peanut butter issue was because of a roof leak that supposedly was not noticed until after the contamination and that company is completely out of business now. What possible benefit to the share holder did that bring? The benefit would have been to avoid the contamination in the first place and profitable sell safe food instead of going out of business or losing an entire crop.

or the poison dog and cat food the year before

And I believe that the chinese responsible for it faced a death penalty because of how wrong it was, their sales have dropped, they were forced to do a product recall and import restrictions around the world were placed on the company. How is that in the interests of the stock holders?

fire in the Georgia chicken processing plant in the eighties that killed 25 people who couldn't get out because management chained the doors shut.

You mean the Hamlet chicken processing plant fire that resulted in the forever closing of the plant, the owner serving 20 years in prison and the highest fines ever levied at that time? How was that any good for investors? Clealy they lost more then any occasion theft through fire exist would have been stopped due to the chaining of the doors.

It doesn't explain why Jack in the Box is still open for business, despite the fact that its poisoning outbreak ten or so years ago killed children.

You mean the lettuce contamination from a single store who instead of purchasing from a company's authorized supplier ended up buying from a local farmer? Why should the entire chain be shut down because of the actions of an Isolated store that was taken completely outside of their approved procurement processes? Also, they sales dropped, they almost did go out of business nation wide and can you tell me how that was good for the share holders? If I remember correctly, they didn't even save money buying the produce fresh, they were just attempting to help out someone a manager knew.

It doesn't explain Enron - that was an example of BAD regulation. Enron (and the California blackouts/brownouts) happened after d

And the space station toilet is broken. Coincidence?

In case of irreparable damage, the astronauts could move into the space station for two to three months and await rescue by another shuttle

If they're decommissioning the shuttle fleet, why not leave it up there and use it to extend the space station?

not just like "Soviet Russia". (It's just Russia now, FYI)

Yes, but "just Russia" turned to a capitalist market after the USSR crumbled. Thus GPP was correct to say "Soviet Russia", since it was the Soviet Union that was socialist.

When a 12 trillion dollar economy cannot provide basic health care to all...there's a...problem.

Agreed, although I am not convinced that bigger government is the answer to the health care problem.

Regardless, revamping the health care system isn't the only thing that has people like GPP and myself concerned. How about dumping $13-17 BILLION into failing auto companies, then wanting to pour more money down the black hole when that didn't fix things as expected? How about trying to dictate how these companies do business? Or perhaps $13-17 billion isn't enough to raise any red flags, so how about another $700 billion to bail out America's banks? Does that seem Socialist to you? 'Cause it sure does to me.

As we've recently seen, unchecked capitalism is not a good thing since the markets aren't rational after all.

Yeah, sometimes the markets have to adjust themselves, and yes, it's frequently painful when that happens. FWIW, I do believe that government needs to intervene by setting laws on what companies can and cannot do -- thus we get things like the E.P.A., like child-labor laws, like minimum-wage laws, and I suppose even like SOX and SEC. But quite frankly, I don't like the direction that Obama seems to be taking the country (not that I was too thrilled with W's leadership, either...)

Off earth colonies are the only way to insure that all of mankind will not be wiped out by a extinction event like a comet/asteroid strike. One major strike and that is it for mankind. A lunar colony is a cheap alternative for the continuance of the human race. Eventually other colonies could be set up. There are other locations that have even a lower delta v than the moon. In any event for now our only insurance is Colbert's DNA riding on the space station but as noted above, the space station will be deorbited in a few years. $100 billion burnt up with very little science to show for it. Add the shuttle development costs of $176 billion and you could have paid for a lunar colony. Had the money used for the shuttle been spent on nuclear space propulsion we would have a ship with a 1,000 ton payload instead of a shuttle with 60,000 lb payload. We need a colony that is eventually self sustaining for the continuance of mankind. As they say, the meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will escape to the stars.

TFA had very little concrete information, the actual murder case dates back to '97. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to Serrano. End he was eventually convicted in '06.

The Dateline article dates from Dec. 21, 2006.

Cheney Mason: You'd be stretching your imagination to believe you could drive that distance, in the traffic, and get there, and be able to commit this crime. I do not think so.

And the last part of the timeline, the defense argued was even more implausible.

In less than half an hour, Serrano would have had to get off a wide body jet, exit Atlanta airport - one of the busiest in the world - and arrive back at his hotel five miles away. All in time to be photographed looking up at that surveillance camera.

Mason: I challenge anybody to show me, I'll pay them a million dollars if they can do it.

I sincerely apologise for RTFAAB (RTFA and Beyond). Sorry, won't happen again.

This article says about 9 pieces fell off of the fuel tank and struck the shuttle.

It's not a bug. It's an undocumented feature.

This article says about 9 pieces fell off of the fuel tank and struck the shuttle.

At the time, that might have been valid. After reading through the transcript of the show, Serrano already received a sentence so I don't think it really matters anymore.

All the detail is just detail, the end requirement is invariable.

While the functional requirements for bridges tend to be invariant, the "ility" requirements often go wrong. And those performance requirements are the places where software projects often go wrong, too.

Possibly, but this looks like the effect of light beams interacting inside of a target dialectric combined with the differences in light's angular momentum at the different speeds of c inside and outside the target. Aside from also cooking whatever you wanted to tractor, you might be able to accomplish this with very powerful laser pulses and "cloaking" metamaterials. Since the metamaterials bend the relevent light frequencey around a target you may be able to exert the force on the material, use a vastly powerful laser pulse, and not cook the target. This could impart enough force to be useful and could be used to maintain a cloud of such objects over vast distances using a web of laser pulses pushing and pulling the disparate objects into a desired position. Kind of a neat idea and a good intuitive leap to suggest tractor beams

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12961080/

I hear that if you call it, you may even get to lay pipe

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18756150/

then I weep for our future:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31853449/ns/local_news-new_york_ny/?GT1=43001

Except that few of the European diesel cars can pass the tough relatively new US emission standards at a price point that competes with gasoline.

And some states (CA, NY) prohibit them...
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=435228

It turns out that you don't need any children involved for it to be a crime.

If there were any high-quality for-pay alternatives, I'd say he might have a point.

Unfortunately, most antivirus software sucks, with Symantec more or less epitomizing how good ideas on paper can turn into terrible/buggy/bloated security software that actually increases your exposure since it adds another node malicious code can attack. Symantec's argument-from-assertion notwithstanding, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between antivirus software being for-pay and higher quality.

From my experience, there's really bad antivirus software (such as Norton, which I have zero confidence in and would never let touch my machine), and slightly less bad antivirus software. What went wrong? Why does this industry suck so badly? Anyone have any insight?

...Why stop there? Let sponsors have characters "As Captain 'Pizza Hut' Ahab looked out over the sea, he saw her, Moby Dick, brought to you by Target."

Don't you mean The Hut?

Gambia's president claims he has cure for AIDS: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17244005/
No need for a vaccine, people. When will people learn that science can't hold a candle to sympathetic magic?
FYI, I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. Ask your Doctor if Gambia's President's magic is right for you.

It's especially rare if you actively prevent anyone from looking for it.

The US tests less than 1% of slaughtered cattle, Europe tests ~50%, Japan 100%.

Then when an outbreak of Mad Cow occurs in the US, we claim it isn't really Mad Cow, or it didn't come from beef, or anyway it must have come from foreign beef. Or any other FUD.

Stop the practice of feeding meat to cows? Sure! But as Ronald Reagan said, you gotta "trust, but verify".

OK, I found the answer (cite):

At the same time, hedge funds were facing an unprecedented run on redemptions from their own investors. That meant the hedge funds may have had to quickly extract cash from their Madoff positions to pay their own investors back.

"People didn't stop believing in Madoff. They just needed the money, and that started this spiral," said Stephen Breitstone of the law firm Meltzer Lippe Goldstein & Breitstone, which is representing Madoff investors.

President Hu Jintao ordered regulators in January to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect the government's stability, according to state media.

on the other hand it does look like those 3-hour limits would only apply to non-adults, and gold farmers probably include a good number of adults.

And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth.

Which one?

you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.

And somehow I know more than the entire GOP ticket from the last election. I don't mind saying I was wrong - I misunderstood the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the militant Shia movements. I admitted it after I reread some things. Life goes on.

The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for).

They don't have 24 hour electrical service or sewage in much of Iraq. Much of their infrastructure is completely destroyed, and now their literacy rate is dropping like a rock. It's going to cost some money to build it back, and just as Iran did in 53, there will be a movement to stop the theft of oil profits from western countries.

Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.

Read the fine print. Oil companies are allowed to take 60 to 70 percent until their costs are recouped. Anywhere else in the world it's 40%. Once complete, American and British companies, who did not have to bid for access to Iraqi oil, keep 20% of the profits, which is double the normal rate of 10%. So, Venezuela is still doing better than Iraq. Their output has suffered under Chavez, but not as much as Iraqi output has suffered under the US.

Oil prices have gone down about $100 per barrel as well. That's an important fact to remember.

Also, a quicker way to dictatorship is to try and nationalize any of your industries and harm US and British investors. The CIA and MI6 will be up your ass in a heartbeat.

Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?

Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it.

That's a logical fallacy. Iraqis, given the choice between extermination and dictatorship, will probably choose dictatorship, even if it's installed by the United States.

And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.

False. We want to make sure that we maintain control over the worlds proven reserves, in case someone thinks about threatening our empire. Then we have the power to cut them off and throw their society into ch

>Let me try to calm myself a bit. I can accurately be accused of trolling in a sense, which is to say I'm sensationalistic to get people to at least read something besides the same rhetoric passed to us from major news sites that, in my honest opinion, are completely dishonest.

And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth. And that makes you different from a supermarket tabloid writer because...?

You are trolling. Period. Not in "a sense". So grow up. You started another post about al Qaeda having a grand opportunity with all these "militant Shiites", even though al Qaeda has traditionally terrible relations with Shiites, being a fundamentalist Sunni organization that has killed many innocent Shiites for terror and intimidation purposes. And yet when a poster called you on your ignorance, you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.

>Of course I can't read that agreement in the ten minutes I took to respond. Let's say the language was clear and even well intentioned. What happens if Iraq wants to again nationalize their oil fields?

Why the fuck would the Iraqis want to nationalize the oil fields? The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for). Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.

> Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?

Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it. And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.

> We didn't allow it to happen in Iran. We tried to stop it in Venezuela, but the coup failed.

Isn't it ironic? The Iranians have a populist revolution to only set up their own oppressive theocracy. 30 years later, the newest generation wants to have a populist revolution, only to have it squashed under the thumbs of the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, who at this point are starting to look worse than the Shah in terms of mismanaging their own country and citizens. The CIA had no involvement in the attempted Venezuelan coup, other than to indicate that the US government would rather have a military coup by halfway reasonable generals rather than another crackpot demagogue who is only interested in plundering his country's wealth for his own image and legacy. Which was perfectly fucking reasonable. Unless you happen to l

Rather, certain Americans (and Canadians, for that matter) sometimes need to be reminded that their nation *isn't* the greatest, most free, most awesome country in the world... that it is flawed, and often *doesn't* live up to its lauded ideals.

Yes, Canadians need to be reminded too. I'm an American living in Canada, and here's some of the problems I see:

• Vastly disproportionate representation in Parliament
• Prorouged Parliament (WTF? and by the way, how is this aspect of being a crown subject a mere formality?)
• Blank media tax
• Almost total ban on handgun ownership and concealed carry.

As for some of your specific points:

thought: Didn't we just see a story about a man [in the US] arrested for possessing child porn that didn't actually depict children?

• Virtual child porn has always been illegal in Canada to a much greater degree than in the US.

I think our system of democracy is more representative of the people's wishes...

• Oh really? I've literally never met anyone who supports the GST, so why is it still around?

Point is, Canada and the US are free in different ways. I would not go so far as to say that one is any freer than the other -- if anything, they are incomparable.

Also, just in case you haven't heard ...

Well, first of all, she was running for VP, not President...

Really?!?!? How did I miss that little detail??? I'm so embarrassed! Oh wait, that's what I said in the first paragraph: "...had she made it to V.P."....which you quoted, by the way.

neither of them have demonstrated they understand jack **** about relating to people outside a certain (thankfully dwindling) segment of "middle America."

As opposed to Obama, who seems to be really good at relating to CEOs of banks and automobile manufacturers. That money's got to come from somewhere, and I have a sinking feeling it's the working class stiffs like me who will get left holding this bill next April 15th.

Obama may be a charming impostor but he at least can speak eloquently and knowledgeably about many of the bigger issues we face in the world today.

Yep, he can speak eloquently about it all right. Unfortunately, so far, it looks to be style without substance. As for knowledgeably...time will tell, but I'm not hopeful. FWIW, I do hope your right about Obama though, because right now, America is in piss poor shape.

Perhaps I am the only one bothered by how abcnews.com has become a tabloid; here is the MSNBC story for the same, nicely packaged into a single page without news on people living in trees.

No, we are not afraid of tits here. Tits are not usually censored. Most people don't care. Look at the television show "Underbelly" which practically had tits shown in every episode and it had an 8:30pm time slots on free to air TV.

Tits and swearing are far less likely to get censored here compared to violence.

What I find particularly odd is that American television and radio are heavily censored, yet this is seldom mentioned on slashdot. It is common for radio stations to censor songs because of swearing, and its also common for television stations to censor tv shows because of their fear of multi-million dollar fines. CBS was fined $3.6 million for an orgy scene on the show "Without a trace".

My point is that America is not some sort of panacea for artistic expression where one can create their artistic media free from censorship if they wish to mass market it even though it seems to be portrayed as such on slashdot.

I really would be surprised if an internet filtering scheme wasn't on the agenda to be implemented in America too, but on the guise to prevent the dissemination of copyrighted material.

Anyway, didn't slashdot have an article a few weeks ago about how support for the filter is waning and its unlikely that it will be implemented?

This are only charges.

Last year someone already got 20 years for something similar: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28319199

Upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Also, this is not just a US thing, it's happening everywhere in the West.

Example from The Netherlands here.

They claim there images could be used to persuade children into engaging in sexual contacts.

If you're ever wondering why we're all saying goodbye to our privacy, look no further:

http://www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org/materials/Sexual_Fascism_in_Progressive_America.php