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I hate to be the one to question your ability to read graphs but isn't going downwards from left to right a bad thing: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?Symbol=MSFT&CP=0&PT=0

A younger kid can easily enjoy a primitive video game just as well as we could (back when those games were new). It's not until they're exposed to more modern games that the old games begin to show their age. Tempest, Galaga, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Robotron, and other simple games are ideal for children.

Absolutely, and there's a good chance that these simple games are going to help develop hand eye coordination. There's already research that shows that surgeons who play video games make fewer errors. Why not get your kids started early?

In 1965, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 4% of gross domestic product, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development which includes local, state, and federal income and capital-gains taxes in its calculation. By 2000, that figure had dropped to 2.5%.

House approves $30 billion in corporate tax breaks

Article promoting it on MSN.com without mentioning MSFT :
A corporate tax break that could benefit you

Microsoft Reduces Irish Corporate Tax Liability To Less Than 10%

WTO rules against US corporate tax breaks

The EU was set to implement retaliatory tariffs

Senate Approves Tech Corporate Tax Break

Ms use share options to reduce their tax bill by $5.5 billion

Microsft & Cisco pay $0 Federal Income Tax

Oooh, yeay. Another joyride

It has been pointed out that the private industry side of this is the exciting part, which does have some value, but I think the "joyride" part actually has more. Sure this is just for the very rich, right now. Airplanes used to be only for the very rich as well. Virgin Galactic will make space accessible to the public. Right now space is only something cold and functional, for the military and billion dollar businesses. This makes space fun and exciting, not for the lucky Air Force pilot turned astronaut, but for everyone who will now get to go there. That, more than and return mission to the moon or man on Mars will make people put a higher priority on Space exploration and travel. Virgin Galactic isn't about function, but about fun. Like porn on the internet it will pave the way for Space travel to grow much faster that it would under government and industry alone.

"Bong hits for Jesus" is the perfect example of just how over-controlling schools are becoming. Frederick, then a senior, was off school property when he hoisted the banner but was suspended for violating the school's policy of promoting illegal substances at a school-sanctioned event. So in the eternal bloating of government, students are now subject to the law of the school board even when they are not on school property. The fact that it was a "school sanctioned event" is irrelevant. The kid wasn't being disruptive to the schools activities he was being harmlessly disruptive to the Olympic torch passing. If you think that qualifies as a reasonable restriction you need to snap out of your sheep's mentality. Rights, like free speech, are not something that the government "allows". They are inherent to all humans, in places they are repressed by governments, in places they are repressed by cultures, but they always there. The difference is not trivial. In fact it is central to a free society.

Here's a link to a story with a picture of the dragonfly the cia worked with in the 70's. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18963401/
Even if it didn't work very well, that was thirty years ago. I'm betting there's quite a gap of functionality between what we see and what has been developed. For the truly paranoid, here's an article that mentions sitings of such devices: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801434_pf.html

I also thought that the plural was virii. And what do I get looking at online dictionaries? Proof that I'm wrong (http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/virus.html).
Virus, schmirus, I'll get you next time!

It takes on the job training to learn the real lessons

Not all of them have cars or the gas to make an hour round trip. And when your sitting in an emergency room, taking the non existent bus system doesn't seem to be an option. Of course an ambulance would be faster but they won't take you to the other hospitals (which is in a different city) unless the first one approves of it.

When you leave the emergency room before treatment, they still charge you for the visit. It happened to me when I took 18 stitches in my right arm. I left and had a friend who is a nurse (or nurses assistant) wrap it then saw a doctor who stitched it up the following Monday.

When I say thirty minutes, I'm not talking about across town which seems a little more reasonable. I'm talking about 30 minutes of highway driving without traffic. But most of the people who goto our local hospital don't have the option of driving somewhere else. This might be why it is only a 4-8 hour wait though. There might already be a good portion of people who goto a different hospital emergency room by default. There are numerous articles on the web about wait times. Here is one of the first ones, listed but here is one where someone died and they considered it a homicide. Keep in mind that to have an average, you need to have higher and lower wait times. The lower will go to the trauma patients and I prefixed by statement with the non trauma waits which bring things into perspective pretty nicely.

Please do note that Unless you live in Canada where citizens are shielded from P2P copyright lawsuits, because the pay an extra fee on their CD, DVD purchases to do so, then downloading some P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any other country. These lawsuits usually take the form of class-action suits, filed against groups of users who are logged as blatantly copying and distributing copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA and RIAA, along with the governments of England and Australia, took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties. " It is also illegal for DMCA to invade the privacy of Canadians, to harass, obstruct their downloads with fakes torrents. Attention the Federal Minister of Industries, Consumer affairs, Jim Prentice Jan 7, 2007 Reference: MediaDefender MediaDefender , a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, who mow had launched even their very own video upload service called "miivi.com". The sole purpose also of the site was to trap people into uploading supposedly copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so. Now the overall the manner in which they did any of this clearly was illegal firstly too in Canada. It has been at least 3 months since the many news media has reported the false invasion of our home computers, invasion of our home privacy, sabatoage of our Internet bittorrent download usage by MediaDefender and so what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? About this big culprit who are seriously responsible for our costly related big interent band width waste usage and that you all should firstly should go after MediaDefender , or Overpeer, who now in the last year with their thousands of computers have generated phony torrents. Now did you have them MediaDefender liable for 'Disrupting Normal Services' by uploading fake torrents and rightfully prosecuted, for 'Disrupting Normal Internet Services' in Canada by their now uploading their fake torrents? Downloading torrents is not illegal in Canada for any Canadians now too but sabotaging our right to do so and their invasion of our personal privacy is. RSVPas to what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/ PS In Canada Peer to peer P2P Internet usage has become very popular and is a main reasons many person have a high speed Internet.. but a high speed Internet does not necessary insure you get adequate speeds on your torrent downloads. Also insure that when you get an Internet Service Provider do first check their actual speeds delivered to you, should be at least 6 megs for a high speed system . see http://groups.msn.com/CanadaToday5/internetspeedtest.msnw or search engine - "Internet speed test", and insure that you have unlimited download capability preferably, and that they do not cap the downloads in anyway.. A simple tip to insure optimize download capabilities is to cap your bit torrent's program uploads capabilities to about 60 kbs, to avoid it from plugging up, and do restrict to about 8 torrents downloads too? Trial and error here will let you know what is best for you. How to improve your downloads using a bit torrent program http://bittorrent-list.blogspot.com/

This is just like CIA Claims Cyber Attackers Blacked Out Cities Do you see the common thread here? Same SANS "expert", too. The guy who gave CIA props for their "disclosure". I remember when SANS was a good, technical security training and education outfit. Now they are on the Richard Clarke / Howard Schmidt CyberTerror disinformation campaign. I would doubt the spook "creds" - if you'd call 'em that - of Alan Paller. The worst theft and correlation of personal data is an ongoing effort by the state - with the telcos CA-CHING! Billing all the while. The crooks and Terra-ists are a joke in comparison. T'rists didn't "lose" several BILLION US dollars in small, unmarked bills in Iraq.

Who loses track of that kind of money? No one. Mistakes aren't made like that. Plans are. But we're supposed to be afraid of teh Internet now. Why? Cos' if we didn't have the 'net, we wouldn't know about that missing cash - or the validity of Operations MOCKINGBIRD, MKUltra, Northwoods, etc.

AirTran? This is a great outfit!

It depends if you consider Turkey as European.
http://www.harunyahya.com/

This organization is litteraly sending thousands of books (called Atlas of Creation) to schools around Europe.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15857761/
Nobody clearly understands where their funds come from...But they are "huge".

I really hope you were joking, but in the event that you weren't....
Bible infallible? Really? How much flamebait did you want to push? Also, I'd love to find out about your answer to how we came from Adam and Eve and yet our entire human race didn't die off from inbreeding resulting thereof?

Please, I'm tolerant of religion. Do what you want. Don't bother me. But don't dare shove it in my face, or I'm going to give to you in the form of a UFIA. Cept replace the F with fist, or flying spaghetti monster.

If we didn't have religion, people would have one less chance to believe that things "simply can't be explained" and might actually have to realize that you have to figure out how to live your life, and that religion can, at best, only be a guideline for life thousands of years ago. Here, today, 2008, it just doesn't work. The only positives from religion are to be of tolerance and compassion for others. If you ask me though, I believe!

China and others finance the US deficit. So, they will go down with the US a bit.
One of the main reasons for these countries to help America is its role as superpower and 'worldpolice'. But everone can see it's not as good at it as it used to be: struggeling with two costly wars in Iraq and Afganistan. Whilst (nuclear) Pakistan is rapidly falling into the hands of extremists.
So if the US limits thier imports from China (protectionism?), China will limit it's willingness to finance US debt.

There's only about 300,000,000 americans, their excessive consumption can be compensated by minor growth in other counties.

Also imported oil accounts for about two-thirds of US [oil]consumption, there's a need for oil all around the world. The US cannot expect to continue consuming 50% of the worldsupply. More expensive oil will hurt the US economy (and it's SUV-loving citizens).

Other problems include rapidly rising medical (anyone uninsured?) and pension costs of an aging population.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," [Stephen] Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13293390/

Aside from all the short-term disasters, there is the ultimate long-term one that will occur as the sun reaches the end of its life and Earth becomes uninhabitable. I think the point is simply that we can't rely on our future, more technologically capable descendants to lift us off this planet. There's the very real possibility that we could enter a technological dark age from which we may not emerge for a long time. One of my favorite quotes:

"For the environmentalists, The Space Option is the ultimate environmental solution. For the Cornucopians, it is the technological fix that they are relying on. For the hard core space community, the obvious by-product would be the eventual exploration and settlement of the solar system. For most of humanity however, the ultimate benefit is having a realistic hope in a future with possibilities.... If our species does not soon embrace this unique opportunity with sufficient commitment, it may miss its one and only chance to do so. Humanity could soon be overwhelmed by one or more of the many challenges it now faces. The window of opportunity is closing as fast as the population is increasing.... Our future will be either a Space Age or a Stone Age."
-- Arthur Woods and Marco Bernasconi, Space News, 1995

Isn't this more like an "all-you-can-eat" restaurant situation? As long as you are eating the meal, no problem (Simpsons episodes and Louisiana restaurants - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22487819/ - aside).

The restaurant wouldn't want you to buy one all-you-can-eat meal ticket and then feed your whole family with that purchase.

NBC New exit polls http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225995/

The CNN and NBC (MSNBC used the NBC results) exit poll results (still available on their sites) have Senator Clinton winning by 2% http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225995/

It could be a fair fight if they are being hunted by cats that glow as well.

Damn straight, my brotha! And this lady can help us do it! ...once she gets that bajillion or whatever dollars, that is.

You should really read physicist Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster for an honest analysis of what lead to that orbiter's destruction. There's also a good list of myths about the disaster that's worth reading - for example the belief that Reagan's state of the union had anything to do with the disaster.

Launch officials clearly felt pressure to get the mission off after repeated delays, and they were embarrassed by repeated mockery on the television news of previous scrubs, but the driving factor in their minds seems to have been two shuttle-launched planetary probes. The first ever probes of this kind, they had an unmovable launch window just four months in the future. The persistent rumor that the White House had ordered the flight to proceed in order to spice up President Reagan's scheduled State of the Union address seems based on political motivations, not any direct testimony or other first-hand evidence. Feynman personally checked out the rumor and never found any substantiation. If Challenger's flight had gone according to plan, the crew would have been asleep at the time of Reagan's speech, and no communications links had been set up.

Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident

7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster

Pentagon tried just this in 2003 — use the method to predict terror attacks. The Congressional outcry about "trading in blood" was such, that the program was scrapped shortly after being announced...

Quoting from MSNBC report:

The Pentagon Tuesday agreed to abandon the plan, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman said, after Senate Democrats Monday blasted the plan as nothing more than state-sponsored "gambling on terrorism."

And on MSN Video.

Of course not. What is going on at Intel, and more clearly in Redmond, is far worse. These institutions, that have such a powerful affect on communities all over the world, are currently dominated by social darwinists (see also here, and also here).

SD is a kind of religious belief in certain Higher Laws that justify extreme competition, to the point where its adherents have a pathologically warped understanding of the concepts of "altruism" and "community". SDists are always striving to get a bigger piece of the pie, because they see that kind of competition as being good for humanity and human institutions: it is supposed to force others to better themselves, and it is supposed to force poorly competitive institutions into restructuring into something that better fits their niches in the social ecosystem.

This constant need to compete makes it impossible for SDists to truly see the benefits of altruistic efforts to make the entire pie bigger. In the extreme, the SDist prefers to fight to secure a larger share of seed corn to munch on now, than to help with a community effort to develop new farmland and get much larger harvests for everyone later.

In the extreme case, when confronted with successful community efforts to make bigger pies, the rabid SDist goes potty-mouthed, and starts throwing chairs and making lethal threats. I don't believe Intel is quite that extreme. But the Intel corporate culture is definitely dominated more by SD than is good for it, or for anyone else.

The MS Explorer sank off antarctic without any injuries to passengers or crew and the abandonment of ship was described as orderly. The Greek ship Sea Diamond with 1600 person and 2 were missing.

The MS Explorer sank off antarctic without any injuries to passengers or crew and the abandonment of ship was described as orderly. The Greek ship Sea Diamond with 1600 person and 2 were missing.

rice university and, independentaly and simultaneously, the university of chicago.

the rice survey included social scientists as well as natural scientists, although even among natural scientists over 60% reported personal belief in God. the U of C study was given only to doctors. the 1914 leuba survey was limited to natural scientists only; presumably the 1997 reiteration followed suit.

it is unclear whether either the rice or U of C surveys used the phrase "personal God" (it seems a trifling distinction to me... given the disparity in results perhaps it is not). the rice survey asked 36 questions, which appears to have explored some variety of nuances of belief. the citation you have provided me regarding the original 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seems to give little detail into the content of the survey questions. if i read it correctly, the 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seem to have had only two. the 1914 leuba survey was sent only to those mentioned in a particular publication, while the 1997 reiteration was sent only to members of the NAS. might the publication and the NAS have similar axes to grind? might rice university and the university of chicago? who knows. the surveys were different and the results were different.

here's what's most interesting to me - the letter you cite makes mention of a booklet issued by the NAS encouraging the teaching of evolution in public schools. this booklet states, "Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral."

this has been my point all along.

"I would be happy if religion was kept out of science, out of science lessons, out of politics, and anywhere else that concerned the physical world and dealing with facts."

then we are in solid agreement. God is God and science is science and never the twain shall meet. until it's too late to make much difference. but to conflate science and faith weakens both.

I think this is because most people don't care about the news, unless it involves a celebrity in rehab or something equally stupid.

Sure we do. But... your new around here aren't you? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22491589/ You can't request what doesn't exist.

Just for interest, in the UK:

Smokers are heavily taxed - nearly 80% of each packet of 20 cigarettes is duty, or £4.03 ($7.96) of the cover price of £5.23 ($10.33) (exchange done using xe.com). (Cost of packet of 20 from 16 March 2007 so you can guarantee the cost of a packet of 20 is even higher now.)

R K Pachauri thinks this will facilitate more gas guzzling on the roads, though Tatas are quick to reject it.
Suzuki thinks safety concerns would mount
People are also worried if our roads will be congested by these cars.

Wasn't there a story recently about how upsetting the circadian rhythm (night shift) may be causing cancer?
I'm betting this one is going to cause humans to evolve into one giant cancer node.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22026660/

You can't ban sex offenders from living, or carrying out activities that are routine for virtually all Americans (except for a few odd legislaters here and there. That is unreasonalbe and unenforcable. This reminds me very much of the Georgia law banning sex offenders from living withing 1000 feet of a school bus stop. It turns out that the in many counties, it is not possible to be more than 1000 feet from a bus stop. That one was thrown out, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21917363/.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6822468/

I'm not certain about your information about being able to survive without sleep. There's also what happens to people with severe sleep apnea which can cause heart problems, problems with the metabolism, paranoia, depression, anxiety and high blood pressure.

On Sept. 3, a man leaving Orlando, Fla., filed a lengthy complaint because he said a screener touched him "like no man ever has -- not even my doctor." "This type of bodily inspection, privately or publicly, is undignified," he wrote. "Have terrorists succeeded in making us that scared of each other?"

Slashdot story about ebay sitting on its hands and doing nothing when given proof of fraud, complete with stories from slashdotters who used to work for ebay: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/16/1316203&tid=95&tid=98&tid=123

This guy adds in his own personal experience, where eBay wanted a $25 fee to handle a fraud case: http://danwarne.com/ebay-fraud-under-scrutiny/

In 2002, ebay sits on its hands and does nothing when given evidence of fraud: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078736/

FTC says Ebay is the #1 source of online fraud complaints (circa 2003): http://www.news.com/FTC,-states-take-on-online-auction-fraud/2100-1017_3-999009.html

Still a problem in 2004: http://www.nclnet.org/news/2004/internet_fraud_stats.htm

...and the beat goes on! Just google "ebay fraud" and see hundreds of news stories and personal accounts...

I recall reading a few years ago that eBay was a source of something like 75% of all complaints about online fraud. Just yesterday I saw an item for sale by a guy with a positive rating of something like 24,000. Unless he's selling 6 items a day for the last 10 years, I see nothing has changed.

Sure...though people often seem to prefer to explain these things away--- even when the government can't.

Study: Wealth doesn't stop minority loan bias

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19699330/

Feds to probe discriminatory home loans

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959937/

Sure...though people often seem to prefer to explain these things away--- even when the government can't.

Study: Wealth doesn't stop minority loan bias

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19699330/

Feds to probe discriminatory home loans

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959937/

CFLs aren't the solution. They're full of mercury, which is highly toxic for the environment. The solution is LEDs, but they're not quite ready to replace 100w light bulbs. 2012 is way too soon for LEDs as powerful and inexpensive as 100w bulbs. Give it until 2020.

Besides, do we really need legislation? Walmart already aimed to sell 100 million CFLs for 2007 and forced manufactures to reduce mecury in CFLs, all without legislation.

The C.Crane company is already selling LED light bulbs. They are more efficient than even compact fluorescent bulbs.

To understand why the free market will fix the lighting problem, look at the automotive market. When gas prices rose steeply, Americans switched to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. As the sales of SUVs plummeted, Ford, GM, and Chrysler suffered massive losses. Toyota with its arsenal of fuel-efficient vehicles is about to become the #1 automotive company in the world. These delightful events occurred before Congress raised fuel-economy standards in a recent bill.

Similarly, as electricity prices skyrocket, the American consumer will haul his ass to Walmart to buy the super-efficient light bulbs.

Legislation is simply not necessary to fix the problem. The free market will fix the problem.

Anyway, he's an idiot.

He keeps calling for reduced government/spending, but then he goes and asks for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for special projects for his constituents in Texas...

He doesn't know how much money income taxes bring in, but wants to get rid of them. He doesn't know how many troops we have, but he wants to bring them all home. He doesn't really know anything about any issue that he has a stance on.
interview

MR. RUSSERT: "If elected president, Paul says he would abolish public schools, welfare, Social Security and farm subsidies."
REP. PAUL: OK, you may have picked that up 20 or 30 years ago, it's not part of my platform. As a matter of fact, I'm the only one that really has an interim program. Technically, a lot of those functions aren't constitutional. But the point is I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government and interfering...
MR. RUSSERT: Would you abolish them?
REP. PAUL: I would, I would not abolish all their functions, but I--the, the, the...
MR. RUSSERT: What about public schools? Are you still...
REP. PAUL: OK, but let's go, let's go with the CIA. They're, they're involved in, in, in torture. I would abolish that, yes. But I wouldn't abolish their right and our, our requirement to accumulate intelligence for national defense purposes.

who agree to a salary of $1 (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P143257.asp/) to serve as CEO with the rest of their compensation being based on the performance of the company's stock?

Yeah, any company who'd hire a CEO like that is just going to go from bad (1996 http://www.businessweek.com/1996/07/b346257.htm/) to worse (2007 http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/AppleProfitSoars.aspx/.

who agree to a salary of $1 (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P143257.asp/) to serve as CEO with the rest of their compensation being based on the performance of the company's stock?

Yeah, any company who'd hire a CEO like that is just going to go from bad (1996 http://www.businessweek.com/1996/07/b346257.htm/) to worse (2007 http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/AppleProfitSoars.aspx/.

I can't give you a direct citation because consumer reports is a pay site. They don't accept advertising dollars or even free hardware to review as that would introduce potential bias. They buy all their machines anonymously, through regular retail channels. I can refer you to this article which references the 2007 report, briefly at the bottom. I highly recommend a subscription as being an informed consumer can save you that much money in the long run anyway. The relevant quote is:

The Consumer Reports top-rated Windows laptops in the 15.4-inch workhorse category are:

• Apple Macbook Pro 15"
• Sony VAIO VGN-FE790
• Dell Inspiron E1505

It only references the overall picks though, not the specific reliability ratings. For reliability in 2007, Apple is the runaway winner, followed by Sony and surprisingly, Dell this year (they were below average in 2006 for laptops and still are for desktops). Lenovo is right about in the middle of the pack along with Toshiba and a bit better than Gateway or HP.

What I stated was true in principal. It does not matter what features you care about. What matters is price for equivalent hardware. No comparison can be perfect, so there is some margin of error and ignoring the quality of components and relying only on specs for size and speed is not equivalency. Reliability and quality cost money and can be objectively evaluated.

Apple's laptop offerings? Actually the Mac mini is widely regarded as being the best value in the small footprint computing space, by a fairly wide margin. Apple is price competitive in the all-in-one space and in the consumer laptop space. They used to be very competitive in the 2U server space, and RAID space as well, but have fallen behind the curve in the last year. They've always been a bit on the expensive side for pro desktops and pro laptops, but all-in-all they are not out of line with the rest of the industry, unless you try (unfairly) comparing their very reliable, higher end offerings to someone else's less reliable midrange systems.

Gee thanks for proving my point. You just compared Apple's high end offering to someone else's midrange system, based upon the fact that Apple does not sell a headless midrange system. You have to compare equivalent systems, not the closest available when that is not close at all. Apple offers fewer machines than the rest of the OEMs combined, go figure. That is a disadvantage, but it is a different disadvantage than Apple machines being overpriced for what they are.

I love how these coal plants are all Bush's fault when 100% of them existed for 100% of the Clinton administration

On the one hand:

• Bush energy plan includes coal-burning power plants
• Bush: Kyoto treaty would have hurt economy

• Clinton Blasts Bush On Kyoto Pact -- Ex-President Says Current President 'Flat Wrong' On Global Warming
• Barack Star -- Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama's got green cred

Sadly, I predict orders from the KGB and CIA.