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I have never received a movie out of order on Netflix but I joined after the lawsuit. At the time I read that people who receive movies out of order are the super heavy users of Netflix. E.g. people with the 3 movies out at a time plan who manage to watch 25 movies in a month. On the other hand people who watch only 2 or 3 movies a week are considered preferred customers and almost always get their first choice and get their movies mailed first. I fall into the later category and my movies always arrive the next day. I've never had to wait for a new release.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11262292/

Yes, that is a valid concern, but that is not from TFA. In fact, the only mention of electrocution comes directly from the slashdot editor's/submitter's summary:

The above quote rather explicitly attributes the danger of electrocution from electricity being generated from the solar panel, not the discharge from static build up.

The short of it (no pun intended): Electrocution from the electrical current from the solar array? No. Electrocution due to a static discharge? Possibly yes, but it's not the source of the lethal electricity alluded to by the summary.

It's the other way around.. Kmart owns Sears.. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6509683/

Colbert doesn't want to be president.

There, I said it. It saddens me, but it's the truth. His bid was just a move for laughs on the show in my opinion. I think he would have a real shot as well if he did it as Stephen Colbert the person, and not Stephen Colbert the character... but Stephen Colbert the person is more comfortable doing the show and has already said he doesn't actually want the job.

If MS and the BBC were in cahoots, don't you think there would be a Vista version? Microsoft doesn't want you buying XP any more.

Are you implying that there is a lot of crap spewing out of major media outlets that doesn't or shouldn't qualify as 'news'? ;)

According to the Creation Museum there should be some caveman tracks nearby too.

Ha Ha Ha...no. It's a nice idea but not at all true. Popular music continues to be dominated by RIAA bands, and the only major band I can think of to buck the trend is Radiohead with its current release. Anyway that's not a fair example, as the band built up its currently following entirely under an RIAA label.

Keep in mind contracts usually run out after a set number of albums - the big artists are re-signing up with new record labels, not opting to go independent.

You talk about this as if it's a movement being led by bands, realizing they don't need labels. In reality, labels are instrumental in the promotion and production that is behind basically every well-known band today.

Apple admits that iTunes isn't that profitable, and that mostly its intent is to drive sales of iPods and Macs. To me it seems very reasonable that NBC wouldn't want to be a part of this loss-leader strategy, without some portion of the profit Apple derives from it.

And producing a "Seinfeld" is cheap? What planet are you on? Have you seen Youtube sketch comedy, and how much it sucks? Without the keen writing and star actors and smooth production, the product is shit. Whereas 30 Rock, the Office, et. al, are consistently much better than anything that can be found on Youtube.

Ha Ha Ha...no. It's a nice idea but not at all true. Popular music continues to be dominated by RIAA bands, and the only major band I can think of to buck the trend is Radiohead with its current release. Anyway that's not a fair example, as the band built up its currently following entirely under an RIAA label.

Keep in mind contracts usually run out after a set number of albums - the big artists are re-signing up with new record labels, not opting to go independent.

You talk about this as if it's a movement being led by bands, realizing they don't need labels. In reality, labels are instrumental in the promotion and production that is behind basically every well-known band today.

Apple admits that iTunes isn't that profitable, and that mostly its intent is to drive sales of iPods and Macs. To me it seems very reasonable that NBC wouldn't want to be a part of this loss-leader strategy, without some portion of the profit Apple derives from it.

And producing a "Seinfeld" is cheap? What planet are you on? Have you seen Youtube sketch comedy, and how much it sucks? Without the keen writing and star actors and smooth production, the product is shit. Whereas 30 Rock, the Office, et. al, are consistently much better than anything that can be found on Youtube.

Even if Veropedia is completely above board in this respect, the advertising will produce a perception of editorial slant in favor of the advertisers. This perception can be just as damaging to credibility as an actual slant would be.

My God, this is just an encyclopedia! I use Wikipedia every day, but I'd be a fool to trust information on there for anything important without verifying it somewhere more credible on the subject. For all of its talk of NPOV, the views expressed in a given wikipedia article represent whatever group is willing to spend the most effort on it. At least with "advertiser bias" it should be pretty obvious how to take that into account - indeed I'd prefer a "pro doritos" bias to the anti-expert bias that is so heavily enshrined in the beaurocratic power structures of Wikipedia. Truth is not a democracy, and the sad fact is that for many subjects (especially highly technical ones), it is difficult for a non-expert to gauge what they do not know - and just how badly they are raping these articles by "simplifying" them to the point of inaccuracy.

I've done, maybe 800 edits on Wikipedia, and after seeing this, and the massive effort it took to keep people who took an introductory class in a subject from remaking articles on that subject in the image of their own purposely approximate understanding... I just gave up. I'd love to read articles that someone with a PhD says is accurate, and if there's a monkey to punch to win a free iPod dancing next to it, so be it. The people using Encarta (okay, all seven of them) don't seem to mind that it's ad supported, and neither would I.

Yes, candidates will go back on some campaign promises and that needs to be factored in. Yes I could have gone into a detailed description of exactly how there's a correlation between campaign promises kept and voting history. That was not the point of the blog and I don't have the time to write about every political nuance which may come up as being loosely related.

What should be focused upon is a candidate's beliefs, views, and voting record. With that said, Colbert may be an even worse choice. There is a strict difference between Colbert and the mainstream candidates in that Colbert will never take anything seriously. Colbert would not dare break character for a second because how dare he sacrifice comedy for realism.

If you watch his Hardball interview it's downright uncomfortable for that simple fact. I expect candidates to go back on a few of their promises in general which is something that is unfortunate, but yes it happens. Colbert at this point is throwing himself into the ring for the sake of comedy and disruption. People should vote for a real platform.

Please Read: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/OurBiggestExportInflation.aspx

Article Excerpt:

A pain in the wallet

That's how a falling currency is supposed to work. A cheaper dollar encourages exports and discourages imports, leading to a gradual climb in the value of the dollar. Ultimately, a high U.S. trade deficit hits you and me right in the wallet. Here's how:

• When the U.S. is running a big trade deficit, our trading partners wind up holding a larger number of U.S. dollars every month. A trade deficit means we're importing more goods and services than we export, and we wind up exporting dollars in order to pay for the excess goods.
• As those dollars build up overseas, governments, companies and individuals recycle them by buying U.S. bonds and stocks and other assets.
• This increases the exposure of these overseas owners of dollars to the risks of the U.S. currency and U.S. asset markets. If the value of the dollar declines, their dollar-denominated investments will lose value as well.
• At some point, these overseas owners of U.S. dollars start to demand higher returns -- higher interest rates on Treasury bonds, for example -- to offset that currency risk.
• Some may sell off a portion of their dollars, producing exactly the kind of fall in the currency that they had worried about in the first place, which leads again to a demand for higher returns.
• The higher interest rates demanded by overseas dollar holders finally start to slow economic growth in the U.S. That slowdown, plus the higher prices consumers have to pay for imported goods because of the weak dollar, takes a painful bite out of family incomes. (Or it halves or eliminates the family income, if one or both family breadwinners get laid off because of the slowdown.)

we literally pissed away 35+ YEARS

Nation's been asleep and nobody has done anything in all that time, huh?

Computers sure seem better than they were 35 years ago. I carry a phone in my pocket. Apartheid has ended in South Africa. Disco music has been successfully crushed, tainted as "no longer cool." Lead has been vanquished from our gasoline, resulting in the virtual elimination of all crime. Wal-Mart distribution has efficiency that people couldn't even dream about 35 years ago. And last, but not least, The breakfast burrito has been perfected.

We didn't piss away the years; we just didn't use the years the way you want. Technology (and more generally: the inventive capabilities of the human spirit) carried on, its passion at odds with an uncaring universe. It developed what it wanted to, solved problems that it thought needed solving.

And now we have the most literally awesome breakfast burrito mankind has ever seen. I'm sure those who enjoy the fruits of that burrito research and development (yeah, like any of them actually eat fruit, when such a lusciously filling burrito is around), had the resources been spent on continuing the Apollo program continued instead, would say,

We had a good start on the breakfast burrito problem, 35 years ago. And we PISSED IT AWAY, developing space applications instead. What good is a glass of Tang, if not used to wash down the perfect burrito? Why is burrito technology languishing, while pie-in-the-sky ideas capture Joe Sixpack's imagination?

Think about it. Life is what you make it, and we made something. You just don't like it.

So go ahead, eat your fruit and drink your Tang, and live in willful ignorance of (and spite for) Hardee's groundbreaking Country Breakfast Burrito. Daydream of a renewed Apollo program. Meanwhile, the Prime Movers of human progress -- the people who make the world turn! -- will continue to work on what they think is important. Is the Monster ThickBurger really the upper end of burger thickness? Is there a barrier that cannot be crossed? The intrepid human spirit screams, "No! There are no limits! With passion and ingenuity, anything is possible!"

The Bureau of Labor statistics, in particular their "100 Years of Consumer Spending" publication. Available here. (~500k PDF)

The graphs you want to look at are the "Expenditure Share for Non-Necessities" graphs for various regions (US generally is on p.11). It started off at a little over 20% just after WWI, and then climbed steadily and dramatically (30% after WWII, which was the real formation of the 'middle class' in the U.S., ~35% in 1960, ~40% in the early 70s) until you get to the current figure which is around 50%. Nationally, that's an all-time high.

If you look at particular areas, like New York City, there has been a small but significant hit in non-necessity spending since the mid-80s boom, probably due to increases in the cost of living due to increased rent. (But in all fairness, NYC is a lot nicer place to live now than it was then.) Spending in Boston also slumped slightly, probably for the same reason. So you get some regions that are probably feeling the pinch -- time to move.

Anyone who thought the 70s were some sort of picnic is looking at them through some seriously rose-colored glasses. The 70s were a time of instability, high unemployment (over 8%!), and out of control inflation. If people were buying things then, it's only because they knew that trying to save it was a waste of time.

It's more difficult to find good data that's correlated with income, but there are a few here and there; including this one from the Family Economics and Nutrition Review, which says flat out: "The data indicate that all household groups were better off in 1989-90 than they were in 1980-81, as measured by the amount and share of total expenditures on nonnecessities ("other")." So that would indicate that there hasn't been some sort of continuous slump from the 70s until today -- in the 80s things actually got better, and the 1980s weren't exactly known as a great period for the economy (certainly not compared to the 1990s).

In terms of cost-adjusted purchasing power (which the BLS estimates in the introduction to the big report above [1], as probably tripled in the last century), you'd be insane to want to live in any previous era, unless your metric for success is purely that of being on the same level as your neighbors. Yes, there were times when there was more income equality, but that's not necessarily an indicator of prosperity; you can still make more money, buy more, and have a better cost of living in a lower socioeconomic bracket today than you could in the past. Lower brackets haven't experienced the growth that higher ones have, but you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face not to take advantage.

I think the major way the middle class has been 'squeezed' is that there are a lot of people there who traded up to the upper-class (with McMansions, cruise vacations, etc.) on credit, and probably quite a few people in the lower class who borrowed into middle class lifestyles (via shady mortgages) as well. And understandably, income inequality does create a social pressure to overspend. But now that the credit crunch is coming to an end, people living outside their means are going to have to find their way back to a better balance.

[1] "Between 1901 and 2003, the average U.S. household's income increased 67-fold, from $750 to $50,302. During the same period, household expenditures increased 53-fold, from $769 to $40,748. Equally dramatic is that the $40,748 would have bought more than $2,000 worth of goods in 1901 prices, indicating a tripling of purchasing power."

Funny, because the US is now beating Japan in new vehicle quality, according to JD Power.

When I try to access the third page of the article, labeled CONTINUED: "Net Neutrality" debate, the server says Page not found. Is Comcast (or MSNBC's carrier) somehow interfering here, too, just to keep me from reading about the debate?

I think what the grandparent there meant was, "we need standards that browsers other than Opera and Safari actually follow."

Was she a virgin or not?
****
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15029288/

No, the clothes she is wearing were common for expecting women of her time. It's also probably who Leonardo might have made her cheeks look less round. There is some speculation that he tried to cover up the fact later in his life by altering the painting.

Get an iPhone, people. As much as I mock people who slavishly participate in mind-numbed Apple worship...

Unlike yourself, of course. Rather than debate this myself, head on over to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21206757/

From this article:
So here we are, three months later, and this remarkably inventive device that's so lacking as an actual phone but so promising as the be-all/end-all gadget is no better than at launch, and even less hopeful because of Apple's action against iPhone customizations that enable it to do more than just what Apple says it can and should do.

It runs LINUX, for chrissakes.

Well, yeah, it does! That just about guarantees that Nokia cannot play the same games that Apple is playing with the iPhone and that the capabilities of the Nokia N8XX will only get better with time.

If you want something to surf the web and not look like a clown, don't get an iPhone!

You don't get out much, do you?
I was about to say "Only in America" but you guys are merely the world champs of armed stupidity. We aren't nearly as creative.

Nice troll.

http://www.rockonthenet.com/archive/2000/vh1hardrock.htm
#1 in "VH1: 100 Greatest Hard Rock Artists"

http://www.avrev.com/bands/
#1 in "AVRev Top Ten Rock Bands of All Time"

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939214/the_immortals_the_first_fifty
#14 on "The Immortals: The First Fifty"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4595384/
#6 in "The 10 best rock bands ever"

http://classicrock.about.com/od/recommendationsandreviews/a/top100_bands.htm
#5 in "Top 50 Classic Rock Bands"

You're right, GP is WAY high... but the "less than one percent of smokers" number is way low according to government statistics.

According to the US Gov the "lifetime risk", any random person's chance of getting lung cancer before s/he dies, is about 7% max. Getting it is pretty much a death sentence though, as less than 1 in 5 will survive after five years.

The Dana Reeve case pointed out to pop culture that you can get lung cancer without smoking. Roughly 10 percent of men and 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer are non-smokers. Assuming a roughly even split between men and women, we'll say 15% of lung cancer cases are non-smokers. That means the other 85% of that original 7% have smoked at some point in their lives... Let's round that to 6% of lung cancer cases are smokers. Knowing that about 20% of the US population smokes... that gives us percentages of people who will develop lung cancer before death:

• Smokers = (0.06/0.2=0.3) 30%
• Non-Smokers = (0.01/0.8=0.0125) approximately 1.3%

[...] by building contact lists of who calls who. This is precisely what they want to do in the name of fighting terror, but they get the same lists of people in various political parties, with ties to groups that expose various embarassing things about political leaders, have viewpoints that differ from their own or those in power

They could abuse that, indeed, if they were monitoring the calls within the US — something that is, indeed, illegal, and that is not even being alleged to has happened.

Monitoring calls where only one of the parties is in the US might be illegal too, but is far harder to abuse because most of the political life of USA happens inside the country. I mean, they could have found some calls between Clintons and Chinese Army or Kerry and Chinese Army, but that's about it...

has. And I can guarantee you that an administration that implemented NSA spying - AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA - 7 months BEFORE 9/11 - would be more than happy to misuse that information.

This sort of accusations needs links to respectable sources. 7 month before 9/11 (February 11, 2001), this administration was in its first month of governing (the President having just delivered the first "State of the Union" address; the kitchen staff still washing the dishes from the inaugural banquet) and merely preparing for the fight on tax cuts and the "No Child Left Behind" legislation projects. To imply, they have already implemented a new spying program as well is to give their efficiency way too much credit...

I think, the blogger, whom you copy-pasted here, got confused and confused you...

They have done more that is contrary to the Constitution and have by many Constitutional scholar's violated more than any other administration in history.

Worse even than Nixon's?.. Wow...

The US is very different, in theory every book is free, just that libraries that stock the wrong ones get no funding.

• habeas corpus
• torture
• Fourth amendment
• free speech in peaceable assemblies
• freedom of the press
• widespread corruption

The 1993 attack did significant damage and exposed the many - many - problems in combating a high-rise fire, but it did not threaten the structural integrity of the building.

Only because they didn't place it very well.

To quote from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3069653/: On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center merely shook but did not collapse. But it was a close call. Later, the WTC's architect would tell jurors that if the van had been left closer to the poured concrete foundations, they would have succeeded. The tower would have fallen.

1-2 meter? where do you have those numbers from? Did ya just pull em out of your arse? IF things go so badly that the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts, see level vill rice about 68 meters, 61 from Antarctica and 7 from Greenland.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385475/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720536.stm

Mind you, this is what you would have found had you bothered to ask google

I doubt any scientist will say the question is what happens to the sea lvl if the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts, but rather IF it will melt and if the rice we now see in temperature is man made.

Ok, since it's so hard for you to imagine our wonderful government overstepping its boundaries in regards to our constitutional rights under an ultra-secretive, paranoid, neocon administration...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999950/

Go ahead and google 4th amendment patriot act unconstitutional like I did. This guy's story is everywhere and I'm surprised you missed it. Not only were parts of the Patriot Act and FISA rules unconstitutional, but the man in question, Brandon Mayfield, is collecting a 2 million dollar payday courtesy of Uncle Sam royally fucking this one up.

Moonbats, indeed. I'm glad this happened to an attorney or it would have never been ruled on.

I think Doris Lessing, recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature put it best... "pure political correctness".

Batteries schmatteries. There are many other ways to power flying stuff, some with much bigger energy densities. How about, say, steam?
Gyros? Accelerometers? Processors? Why? If you're not very particular about aspect and you're willing to lose a few craft, you can do with just a heavyish, flat tail for stabilization. You can solve the heading problem by simply making the things point to the most brightly lit thing around - the Sun will tend to be that thing more often than not so you can pick a spot roughly between it and your target and let the bugs fly away...
If something like this hasn't been patented yet, I claim prior art, of course.

Have you seen the camera the size of a pill that can be swallowed and provide reasonable res pics of your innards http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3606947/
How much of a stretch is it to put one on a small flying toy albeit with different optics?

All that said anything deployed in this manner would more likely to be a test rather than for intelligence gathering considering that every electronic transaction is being mon [thud click buzzzzzzzz]

I'd like to mention that robotic, spying dragonflies were originally built over 30 years ago.

http://www.dougneeper.com/news_articles/CIA_Used_Dragonfly_Catfish.htm
The CIA once built a mechanical dragonfly to carry a listening device but found small gusts of wind knocked it off course so it was never used in a spy operation.

After seeing the life-like "insectothopter," Hiley jokes that she cannot look at a dragonfly in the same way anymore.

In the 1970s the CIA had developed a miniature listening device that needed a delivery system, so the agency's scientists looked at building a bumblebee to carry it. They found, however, that the bumblebee was erratic in flight, so the idea was scrapped.

An amateur entymologist on the project then suggested a dragonfly and a prototype was built that became the first flight of an insect-sized machine, Hiley said.

A laser beam steered the dragonfly and a watchmaker on the project crafted a miniature oscillating engine so the wings beat, and the fuel bladder carried liquid propellant.

Despite such ingenuity, the project team lost control over the dragonfly in even a gentle wind. "You watch them in nature, they'll catch a breeze and ride with it. We, of course, needed it to fly to a target. So they were never deployed operationally, but this is a one-of-a-kind piece," Hiley said.

And here's a pic: http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070531/070531_spytool3_hmed_10a.hmedium.jpg

Perhaps they've improved the control by now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21212671/

Your discussion remind me of this excellent essay by Robert J. Samuelson entitled The Sad Fate of the Comma.

Of course it is hard to tell anything from a single article since it could very well be the reporter projecting his fervent wishes onto the data.

"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States" ...
"why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.

"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem,"

The Sub-Prime Market imploded, which has been very bad for US banks, like NetBank (which was just shut down by the FDIC).

The budget defecit swelled to 117 billion dollars in August. For those keeping track, that's up 80% year over year, with spending up 30% month over month.

Oh, and for icing on the cake - it looks like housing sales in some areas are down 46% year over year, or 25% month over month.

So, please, we have enough problems - let's not go deliberately taunting the biggest superpower in the world (at least any more - with our 9 trillion in debt, we're not going to be the "world police" much longer.) Also, the "but our GDP grows faster than our debt" argument doesn't cut it when the GDP is shrinking, the currency is in the toilet, and we still get to pay the interest on all that debt.

...I have CIPA, you insensitive clod!!

I am a dumbass... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21032458/wid/11915829?GT1=10357

Actually this is a better article on it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20761653/site/newsweek/page/0/

Do you really want mayors and governors loyal to the Bush administration to have significant say in who has access to look inside your internet connection?

You're right. It's much safer to have your Internet connection controlled by an amoral multinational corporation. You realize, of course, that the telecoms are lobbying to have themselves granted immunity for illegal wiretaps they facilitated on behalf of the Bush administration?

Mayors and governors, in a functioning democracy at least, are accountable to their constituents. AT&T is accountable to its shareholders.

We know that, because *we* did it to the Soviets. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002

And their machines weren't even connected to the internet. So all the people who are saying, "Just disconnect it", well, that's not good enough. We have to engineer systems that are hardened and handle failure gracefully. And don't use stolen software.

Gee, that's the exact opposite of every single definition of "defamation" available to check online.

This isn't legal advice, but while in a strict dictionary sense "defamation" might be anything said that hurts a reputation, truth is an affirmative defense. The articles linked above state that no action is called for and no damages occur when someone states a truth. The person whose reputation is tarnished by the truth earned that reputation. Speaking or printing the truth therefore does no damage to the rightful reputation. That seems to this non-attorney to mean you can call the speech or publication by any name you want, but you're not going to get money by suing someone for telling the truth.

Again, I am not a lawyer, but grade-school Social Studies teachers in the U.S. teach their students about John Peter Zenger and the case of New York v. Zenger. That case set forth truth as a defense for slander and libel in the common law of the North American colonies of England.

BTW, where are "defamiation" and "plaese" on any of the above sites? Do I need the latest edition of Black's? I can't find those definitions at all, oh careful and detail-oriented A. Coward. Without resolving those two issues, I'm having trouble following your carefully stated premise and well-reasoned arguments to your no doubt brilliant conclusion.

Let's talk about the iTunes store. How did you get the record labels, which had been resisting digital music, to sign up?

It was a process over 18 months. We got to know these folks and we made a series of predictions that a lot of things they were trying would fail. Then they went and tried them, and they all failed, for the reasons that we had predicted. We kept coming back to visit them every month or two, and they started to believe that we might actually have some insight into this, and our credibility grew with them to the point where they were willing to take a chance with us.

Ahh, parent poster is a Troll, eh? Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard would probably agree with AC. Is he a troll too? I saw far too many kids there for the party myself... the 'life experience' they called it. We even have online encyclopedias citing which schools paaar-tay the hardest. I'm sure that image doesn't hurt enrollment numbers and the government money flowing into universities. I wouldn't be surprised if universities quietly encourage that 'rep' via PR firms. College is big business. So big in fact that university finances have begun drawing the scrutiny of congress. We've even begun exporting American-style higher education. It may not be the best in the world, but it sure makes a shitload of money.

In the meantime, there's a lot of kids leaving college with a worthless degree and lots of debt. The university was enriched by the process, but you can't say that for all their graduates. I'll bet if the OP had mentioned something about outsourcing the post would be +5 Insightful.

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.

On Friday, President Bush signed legislation that will name a new $110 million, nine-courtroom addition to the federal courthouse in Bryant's honor.

Bryant was known for his dedication to Constitutional law and believed that lawyers could stop injustice.

"Without lawyers, this is just a piece of paper," Bryant said of the Constitution in an interview with The Washington Post last year. "If it weren't for lawyers, I'd still be three-fifths of a man. If it weren't for lawyers, we'd still have signs directing people this way and that, based on the color of their skin."

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.

On Friday, President Bush signed legislation that will name a new $110 million, nine-courtroom addition to the federal courthouse in Bryant's honor.

Bryant was known for his dedication to Constitutional law and believed that lawyers could stop injustice.

"Without lawyers, this is just a piece of paper," Bryant said of the Constitution in an interview with The Washington Post last year. "If it weren't for lawyers, I'd still be three-fifths of a man. If it weren't for lawyers, we'd still have signs directing people this way and that, based on the color of their skin."

You said: Free unlimited energy. The principles of physics regarding conservation of energy, among other things, dictate that there is no such thing. Besides, I'm not sure what planet you are on, but Earth is floating around in this same universe that you believe is filled with "free energy" yet we still pay.

Now, now, you know that I put a comma after "unlimited energy," not a period as it appeared in your quote. I'm not trying to break the conservation of energy laws, the rest of that sentence points out that I'm referring to the potential of solar power generation in space. Using Light from the Sun that we don't have to pay the Sun God for. Yes the equipment costs money to produce and use, but the end result is that the energy that could be produced would outweigh the costs of the equipment, resulting in 'free energy' . Unlimited in the sense that as long as we orbit the sun it's going to be putting out energy that can be utilized. It's the kind of project that could use funding, and could have used it 20 years ago. - look here for info on where this tech sits today.

To people interested in Space the ISS is a shadow of what should be going on in orbit, a very expensive shadow. I love the space station, it's really cool, but seriously it's got mold issues, people have been trapped up there because the shuttle program can not provide reliable service, and the ISS required enormous maintenance efforts - principally EVA in nature. More investment in the ISS doesn't necessarily mean matching benefits from the investment. A lot of criticism of the US space program has been it's focus on big ticket items that yield little or no return and consume all of the shrinking NASA budgets, like the ISS.

At this point the Russians did the very Russian thing of making a point in principle. Is the OS suited or not no longer matters in the slightest. They will simply no longer do educational business with Microsoft in principle and this is it.

You may have a very good point. However, there's likely something else at work here: the widespread belief in Russia (and a lot of the world) about American software's role in that big explosion of a Siberian pipeline in the summer of 1982.

Add to this the recent stories about Microsoft software that updates itself silently, even when you turn off the auto-update, and MS's explanation of why this is the right thing for them to do. A Russian administrator would have to be really stupid (or really on the take) to approve of anything from Microsoft. Granted, a lot of them may do so, but that's just evidence of how stupid (or on the take) they are. So part of the story might be that at the very top, Russian administrators no longer trust any software made in the USA.

But with the BSA story, it does sorta sound like MS is trying its best to get Russians to buy from someone else.

Microsoft's shooting game "Gears of War" for the Xbox 360 was the best-selling console game during the month, selling 815,700 copies. Activision Inc.'s rock-star simulation game "Guitar Hero II" for the PS2 followed, and Electronic Arts Inc.'s "Madden NFL 07" football game for the PS2 came in third place. For the year, "Madden NFL 07" for the PS2 was first with 2.8 million sold, followed by Nintendo's "New Super Mario Brothers" for the DS and "Gears of War" for the 360. ...

Games for the Wii captured 4 percent of the U.S. software market, the analyst noted, with "Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" selling more than 519,000 units during December.

Is all this paranoia actually making us safer?

Google is your friend.
871,500 Americans die yearly from heart disease
Over half a million die yearly from cancer
41,000 Americans die yearly in traffic fatalities
Fewer than 3,000 people have died from terrorist attacks on American soil this entire CENTURY.

So I'd say the answer is a resounding "no". I'd personally like to see some of that Homeland Security money go to safer highways, cancer research, etc.

-mcgrew

"Hey look, the photons accurately react with the environment according to current laws of physics! Finally they figured out how to make games fun!"

:-\

The obsession with graphics is ruining the gaming industry. Compare the PS3's sales to the Wii's for evidence.