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Say what you like about MSNBC, but Alison Stewart is a hottie!

Someone else posted a link, but according to this(IE required :( ), the lights only add $150 to his electrical bill in December, mostly because they are blinking and not on all the time.

The real geeks of this sort of thing hang out at Planet Christmas

And if you read today's news you'd see that the spying was much more extensive than originally revealed.

President Bush and his aides have said his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to al-Qaida. What has not been acknowledged, according to the Times, is that NSA technicians combed large amounts of phone and Internet traffic seeking patterns pointing to terrorism suspects.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would often otherwise require a warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

A federal court ruling quashing the teaching of the religiously-motivated pseudo-science of intelligent design in Pennsylvania schools (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/). Its great to have fought off this challenge to science and education in America (yet again), but sad that we are still having these challenges after all science has accomplished since Western mankind threw off the yoke theocracy first put on science in the Middle Ages.

--MarkusQ

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9085910/

Then again I may have to ask why are the most sunny places and tropical the most poor?

Parents keep secrets from children because that's better for them.

There's really no correlation between Bush's position and a parent's position. If we accept your premise that there are cases where the president should be allowed to keep secrets, then you might reasonably argue that it can do so because it knows more than the public. However, one of the following is true:

1. Bush really believed the intel he was given about Iraq, intel which was entirely fucked. In which case, he doesn't know more than the public, and he has no justifiable reason to keep secrets.
2. Bush didn't care about the intel; he was going to go do whatever he wanted anyway. In which case, he was lying, and has no justifiable reason to keep secrets.

After this, though, your logic becomes truly baffling.

If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you care if somebody knows about it.

Last i knew, leaking government secrets was treason and they still executed people for that. We can only hope.

The Feds do take white supremicists seriously: White Supremicists, White supremacist gets 40-year sentence, A Whiter Shade of Christmas

Burning down an empty house is not a "terrorist" activity

I think every living black american would disagree with you on that one. The implicit threat is elemental.

The answer to the mystery of the NSA snooping scandal - why did they break the law when it was so ludicrously easy to get FISA warrants? - appears to be developing: they weren't just wiretapping, they were data mining. They were using Echelon to 'Able Danger' the whole country (this is Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, which is supposedly dead, in action). The problem is that FISA was enacted prior to the current capability for data mining, and didn't anticipate how ubiquitous it could be. The reason they couldn't use FISA is that they would have had to obtain a FISA warrant for every person in the country. Data mining requires that you follow each link discovered by your snooping, and wouldn't work if it had to be subjected to FISA or the Constitution. The NYT article, now being spun as resisted by the Bush Administration (as if the NYT would publish anything without Rove's say-so), appears to itself be part of the spinning, a limited hang-out to cover up the bigger scandal.

Well, I guess it's time to try out MSN Search since Microsoft hasn't sold out their search results yet. In fact, look at how good it is at finding results! :)

Well, I guess it's time to try out MSN Search since Microsoft hasn't sold out their search results yet. In fact, look at how good it is at finding results! :)

The last great creative mind I remember at Microsoft was Nathan Myhrvold, and I can't remember any great contributions from him.

Ray Ozzie kind of has a great, creative mind.

Is available here: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/05 1220_kitzmiller_342.pdf Of not is the care Judge Jones takes to blast the Board for their "inanity" in pretending that this issue was about science. The precedents and logic are elegant and impeccable. The judge clearly states that ID will never be science. A victory for logic!

Witold Walczak, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the families, noted in his cross-examination of Geesey that the policy was adopted over the objections of Dover High School's science teachers.

"The only people in the school district with a scientific background were opposed to intelligent design ... and you ignored them?" he asked.

"Yes," Geesey said.

by the world's most dangerous leader.

Seditiously,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.

Yes, it is interesting how MSN and Yahoo serve ads in almost exactly the format that google does. I haven't used these other searh engines for so many years now. When did this change come about?

MSN Search has only text ads. Sure, it is MS, but the new engine is actually pretty accurate and has useful features like encarta integration.

Yahoo! search also has no image-based ads. Funny how people are constantly bashing Yahoo!, and now Google is going to have image ads on it's search, where Yahoo! removed them a long time ago.

It's called a free market, we wil see how it plays out. If Google alienates their customers, they will migrate elsewhere.

Sure, here is a clean search engine without those nasty logos. ;-)

Pop-up ads on google.com?

Seriously, I don't expect we'll ever see those, but Google was always known for its clean interface, are they goin to mess it up?

The interface was actually the reason why I started to use Google a couple of years ago.
But now compare Google to Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com/ and MSN Search http://search.msn.com/ , there's really not a big difference anymore.

I wonder if Google will lose visitors because of this, especially to Yahoo!

(They propably won't lose to many to MSN, MSN's search results are pretty crappy compared to Google and Yahoo, at least that's my experience.)

1 in 250000? That's a whole lot better than the odds in a typical, large jackpot lottery. In fact, it is roughly on par with getting struck by lightning if you live in the US (and, odds of dying in a given year, not merely being struck, are worse than 1 in 4 million). So, 1 in 250000 is pretty good, because the odds for winning lotteries are usually worse than the odds of being struck by lightning.

Now, like I said at the outset, the fact that there exist such squalid conditions in India (and countless other parts of the world) might qualify as a travesty (and how is employing these people doing anything but working towards eliminating that?), but... as has been pointed out here numerous times... the hundreds of workers showing up every day don't consider themselves to be exploited. They call it opportunity.

Patel, the foreman, said the company pays $3,300 to the families of those killed and for the cost of getting the body home. There is no medical facility at Gaddani and just one ambulance to take injured men on the hour's drive to a hospital in Karachi. A laborer named Mobeen said he was working on another tanker in October when a cable snapped and severed the leg of a man standing next to him. Mobeen's foot was broken, but two months later, he was back at the Gaddani yards, where he has worked for 22 years.

"Yes, it is dangerous work," he said, wiping his face on a blackened sleeve. "But there is no other work we know how to do. We are helpless."

'Ship Breaking' is indeed incredibly harsh and toxic work.

1. "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy," - GWBush

"We don't quite know what is in these databases that we are spoofing"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

Don't suppose that's the only one, either.

Are you?

Yup, and if it happens to convenient to test psychotropic drugs on him - they certainly won't have any qualms, or at least did not have any in the past:

CIA shrinks and LSD
LSD And The CIA

Or if you're a pesky US citizen in a 3rd world country, or have any contact with anyone from there, even in the US, you could wind up in a big mess:

John Negroponte - Ambassador to Honduras
The Salvador Option

Am I 100% sure that all of these bad things happened? No. But I do know that people abuse power, and it's the nature of these organizations that very little, if anything, that they did which puts them in a bad light will wind up as public knowledge.

The Army! Yeah, that's it! It was secret Army mind-ray experiments.

Predating autos? Well, even if that's proven, the phenomenon is still seen in an area that's known to be a good spot for viewing refractive affects. The same can be said of the Missouri Spook Light. Auto lights proven to be the cause of some of it, at a minimum, yet apparently seen before the auto.

It would seem to me that the more reasonable explanation is locales that are simply good locations to see interesting refaction affects, whatever the light source.

"...I imagine it would follow the same path every time..." The atmosphere isn't that uniform. Cells of a particular refractive index are constantly being disturbed by breezes, perhaps adiabatic effects, etc. I would be surprised if the changes *weren't* random.

That would imply that atmospheric conditions between the source and observer had wandered into the correct state required to cause a light at position A to be seen at position B, and then this inherently unstable system had somehow stabilized.

Finding refractive affects that take place on time scales from fractions of seconds to several seconds isn't difficult. Stars twinkling, even at the zenith, heat ripples over nearly any relatively warm surface (and the Big Bend country is desert), etc.

Add in periodic obscuration of auto headlights by terrain features, atmospherics closer to the source having a larger displacing affect than nearby atmospherics.

Also add in the probability of a sense of mystery being propagated by residents of a small town that certainly isn't noted for anything else and writers trying to sell copy by doing the same, which predisposes observers to believe something truly mysterious is happening.

Americans can be so credulous.

A January 2000 nationwide poll by Yankelovich Partners revealed that 1% of American adults believe they've encountered beings from other planets. And a Gallup Poll in May showed that 33% of Americans believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth-and another 27% aren't sure they haven't.
http://www.centerchange.org/passport/shadowsintoli ght.html

Sixty-seven percent say they believe that the entire story of Christmasthe Virgin Birth, the angelic proclamation to the shepherds, the Star of Bethlehem and the Wise Men from the Eastis historically accurate.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6650997/site/newsweek/

I'm off to order my Q-ray ionized bracelet.
http://www.qray.com/Default.aspx

That is not quite true. A lot of people are trying to get the word out. Problem is, that a lot of people are backing a traitor, know it, and are doing their best to keep other quiet on what is obviously their mistake. Think about how many people here who support bush would admit that they are supporting a traitor, a liar, an obstructor, financially inept, security inept, etc. etc.? This man makes Clinton look positively compitent as well as making McCartney look like a lover of freedoms.

Sure, but you can be sure someone is taking games too seriously, when something like this happens. When did trading in games start spilling over to real life and money, BTW?

As I said before, if the 1st Amendment were repealed, we would still have free speech since nowhere else in the Constitution is any power granted to the government to restrict those freedoms embodied in the said amendment.

I believe, if you check, most (if not all) state governments have constitutions that protect many of the same liberties embodied in the Federal Bill of Rights.

The fact that you state the amendments "did come in handy," means you concede the point, albeit in an understated way - the Bill of Rights have not just come in handy, they have been indispensable to the protection of our rights at all levels of government. I cannot even conceive of a legal instrument that could serve in the same capacity as the Bill of Rights. Without the first ten amendments to the Constitution, I doubt the Senate would even have been debating the constitutionality of the Patriot Act whatsoever.

Can't honestly say I know a whole lot about the Patriot Act, but Glenn Reynolds discussed it in his msnbc blog today. He quotes another blog which basically states that only about 1% of the Patriot Act is expiring due to the non-reauthorization. And that futher, much of the reauthorization would have put limits on the egregous non-expiring stuff. So, this is a mixed bag. Not sure if it's a victory or not. It's a symbolic victory, but perhaps not substantial...

Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?

Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks 'suspicious' domestic groups

By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit

Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.

[...]

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

[...](go to link above to read the entire article)

One of the striking aspects of this is that the U.S. military is directly involved in spying on American citizens. Such activity has not been known to occur, publicly, since the Civil War, and is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878:

20 Stat. L., 145

June 18, 1878

CHAP. 263 - An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, and for other purposes.

SEC. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

It is also worth recalling the quaint document that George W. Bush has called "just a goddamned piece of paper" http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/arti cle_7779.shtml, the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the Bill of Rights:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

At some point the question becomes: which of Bush's TLAs is not illegally spying on us?

Palpatine loses one:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10496539/

According to the MSNBC article, white dwarfs are the result of "Type Ia supernovas".

Is that really true?

It seems like an event like that only 8 light years away would have fried our little pitiful planet in a away that would be very noticeble today, or more likely exterminate all life.

Anyone know?

Actually paying your kids to do it, even if they're a bit expensive, is a great idea.

You can pay them and make a ROTH IRA for them...

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Taxes/Preparat iontips/P33215.asp

http://search.yahoo.com/

http://search.msn.com/

http://www.av.com/

If you want just search, you can get just search. Besides, why aren't you using the search box in Firefox or a QuIcKs1l\/3r plugin for all your searching? That's even more compact.

Women make up at best 40% or market, with women over 40 being the largest segment. Women tend to play solitare, The Sims, and some "online" games. Are you seriously arguing that G4 simultaneously target very lucrative 18-35 year old males market AND the 40+ year old women market? What would this be? "G-Phoria is brought to you by Boniva."?

That's just dumb. The interesection of these two markets is pretty much empty. While some women play games, they don't play the same games as the rest of market. Sure 18-35 year old males also play The Sims, but there's no way to sell to both markets simultaneously.

I wonder if it's any coincidence that if you search for a phrase in Google's "you had invalid clicks so we aren't going to pay you" letter (that phrase being "that invalid clicks have been generated on") in Google, you get 545 results, but if you perform the same search at MSN, you get 832 results.

Things that make you go "hmm." MSN is rarely if ever better than Google at search results.

You mean espionage like the Russian pipeline explosion?

Here in the US we have the "Patriot Act" from 2001, which grants the government a rather extrordinary collection of survalence powers. 16 sections of the bill expire on Dec. 31 of this year, including many of the electronic survalence portions that would be of interest to the /. crowd. The Republican party is trying to push a 4-year renewal through congress by the end of the year, but the 9/11 carte blanche that got it passed initally has run out and there is serious resistance this time around, including threats of a filibuster. Its worth noting that there are some minor improvements in the 4 year extension, and a more substantal overhaul, called the safe act, currently stalled in comitte. For those interested, some stories on cnet and msnbc (look, balance for the news bias whiners!)

They have just released a beta of what they belive will be an "Enhanced and improved" Hotmail. Looks pretty horrible but here it is anyway Mailbeta

Conspiracy buffs believe certain patches in the Windows code might give U.S. authorities the power to access Chinese networks and disable them, possibly during a war over Taiwan.

It happened once, could happen again:

CIA slipped bugs to Soviets
 
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.

True. I really need to learn what the statute of limitations on such a suit would be, I'm still trying to dig myself out from the hole that they stuffed me into. I was flat broke by the time I was "left alone".
They probably mostly grabbed the PC's because they were hoping they could end up in a "Seized Property Auction" and then bid on the items themselves..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10350334/

>The human race slowly becoming extinct because everyone would rather hump a perfect digital partner

DON'T DATE ROBOTS! -His Highness the Space Pope

The keyword here is optional. For anyone who has setup and checked out the personalized google page, they will notice that nothing on these page is forced upon the user. You have the preference to put as much or as little as you want on the personalized portal. I've been hearing the same concerns and exaggerated worry since google started implementing this feature. Doesn't seem like much has changed and while I agree with your sentiment that a lot of google's appeal is in the simplicity of their search page, as http://search.yahoo.com/ and http://search.msn.com/ have thankfully modeled, I don't believe this will be the turning point of seeing a flood of html and javascript on google's page forced upon anyone.

Also, the fact that humans are more likely to do unnecessary steps may indicate a greater willingness on the part of humans to experiment, which is why we have computers, and keep chimps in cages, and not the other way around.

The CNN article linked originally above states, "Majoras said the DirecTV case accounted for 1.4 million complaints."

I'm thinking that the CNN article got its facts wrong here...

A year of solid revenue growth has seen Red Hat's share price rise to $25 from $16 a year ago.

I would guess the stock will rise higher in the next few weeks, not a bad time to buy RHAT stock.

"Red Hat, Inc.: Stock Rating 9 - Red Hat, Inc., a mid-cap growth company in the technology sector, is expected to significantly outperform the market over the next six months with average risk."
From: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/srs/srsmain.a sp?Symbol=RHAT
More info here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHAT