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The result of searching for linux through live.com

The page looked a lot nicer with my adblocking software on.
And is it just me... or does the page look almost exactly like google's?

...and since Windows Media Player 10 is currently WinXP only, anyone still using 98, ME, or 2000 are S.O.L.

Eh, another sign of the MS-NBC partnership, I suppose.

I sure some content creators will sign deals with Google, but many content distributors will have a knee-jerk anti-Google reaction because this makes Google a direct competitor (e.g., another company distributing ad-supported content).

I have been predicting doom for cellular providers recently. (I work for the one named in the story, however I don't have enough clout to be heard, let alone listened to.)

I lust for the day when Wimax is everywhere, you carry a small phone that connects to the network which makes use of your Vonage account.

Perhaps that is why we are suing Vonage for patent infringement.

Great scientific pseudoachievements / pseudoadvances:

Phlogiston (a THEORY!! WOOO!)
http://www.jimloy.com/physics/phlogstn.htm

Montgolfier gas
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2003/hetherin gton/final/montgolfier_bros.html

LSD as a mind control drug
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/lsd-mc-cia.htm
(to be differentiated from drug addiction, which is certainly controlling)

Frontal lobotomies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6379496&dopt=Abstract

Perpetual motion
http://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/whythere.html

the 4^H5^H3 kingdom classification of organisms
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461530646/Classificat ion_of_Organisms.html

Sad that piddling language parsing, legalese, even copyright are what the American Thinkers have to trot out to "win" the debate with the American Believers. How did the intellectuals lose this one --> we had the religious sitting in public classrooms for decades, being taught science and certainly being taught evolution, with blind religious belief kept strictly separate from the curriculum.

Now, less than half of the U.S. "believes in evolution?"

Even I grew up in conservative Catholic schools, but I was taught evolution. It's not as if the majority of Americans were taught creationism in school. We've lost this battle on two fronts: in the classroom, obviously, where we're in complete control and we've no excuses, and then in the churches and temples across this country.

This is a massive, historic failure by American intellectuals and American education. Scientific methodology, philosophy, nay critical thinking have not been adequately communicated to the tens of millions of people who now also believe they, their country and their president "lead the world," "police the world," and are the world's "only Super Power." We have a Believer for what they call "the leader of the free world."

Here's a thought: 99% of us reading and writing here loved science and math class, we couldn't get enough of it. I still see some sigs here and there with "Jesus saved me and he can save you, too" appending an otherwise critically considered opinion. Generally speaking though, we're not blind Believers.

So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?

It could be as simple as communication. Maybe the thinkers should learn to play organs and guitars, write some melodramatic music and stories about the origins of the universe, life and humankind. While marching around with candles and holding up portraits of Great Scientists, we can explain the afterlife (worm pudding), but in a comforting way ( maybe some of Thanatopsis?). We can discuss modding, karmatic /., and maybe Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction) so the congregation understands justice in a critically considered and organized nature.

If we dress science up a bit, teach it as Truth (not as right or wrong, but as critically considered and open minded). We could strongly recommend that all people, for all their life, attend a science class every Sunday morning.

I'm willing to propose that if families regularly attended science class together, we would all enjoy a more reasonable, and more peaceful world.

As much as we intellectuals have failed to "save" the believers, we can take a hard look at where this country has been since 2000 and say undoubtedly, that even moreso the believers have failed us all. Are not the biggest sinners walking this earth today also those most loudly denouncing sin?

BG

didn't some peterson guy in california just get charged and convicted for killing his wife's unborn baby when he killed her?

I think some states actualy have killing an unborn child as a convictable offense outside of medical procedures.

Yep, Scott Peterson was conviced of second degree murder for killing his unborn child and it apears that in killing the unborn child, it allowed special circumstance to enter and the death penalty to come into play.

I suspect that it's a careless link on the part of the editors.

You can see the correct content here

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Investing/Mutu alfunds/P132921.asp

The pr0n link currently points to here

http://edpreview/content/Investing/Mutualfunds/P13 2921.asp

Warning, NSFW ... yeah I know it's it's Saturday night. :-)

way to plagiarize!
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=39733

Anyway, the Setterfield study you mention only used a portion of the points to obtain the decay trend for speed of light, while a best fit of the entire data set shows a slight increase in speed, with constant speed being well within the margin of error. Basically Setterfield picked the data points that would give him the results he wanted, which wouldn't be too hard if you consider that early measurements were less accurate than modern measurements, thus it is obvious that if you only select data points for the larger measurements over time, the speed of light will appear to be slowing down because the margin of error is decreasing. Of course you could do the same thing with the lower measurements and have it appear that the speed of light is increasing.

There are some more responses to the slowing speed of light myth here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE411.html

And here is an article about a recent NASA study that shows the speed of light is constant:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741682/

Seriously. If you're naive enough to thing it's 90% you seriously need to take a look at the sales numbers for the porn industry.

This article is quite enlightening, and as a bonus it summarises some of the research debunking the myth that porn contributes to violence.

You're the one that belongs to the freaky minority - deal with it.

How about the simple fact that the theory of evolution is taught as fact in many, many schools from elementary to the university level (this is certainly true in the schools in my neck of the woods). In fact it appears that in every post regarding evolution that appears here in /., many people are constantly posting about just how factual evolution is.

That's because the overwhelming scientific evidence is in favor of evolution. Judging solely from this post, you appear to be an anti-science theist. Whenever I see people say "it's a theory not a fact" (such as the Dover, PA school district) it drives me nuts because of the error of the statement. Facts are measurable events or states (the ball took 1 second to fall to the ground). Theories are coherent models whose predictions agree with facts (t = sqrt(2h/g)).

The theory of evolution has predicted irrefutable facts. For instance, when searching in areas where the rocks are very old (millions of years) humanoid skeletons were found which were between ancient apes and modern humans. The older the rocks, the more ape-like the features. Which pretty solidly backs up an evolutionary history of man.

Give some logical, scientific explanation as to why a theory is taught as fact, and it is rare that any opposing theory is taught in parallel. In addition, explain why it is that when someone just mentions "intelligent design", they are immediately labeled as a radical, or anti-science, or with some other derogatory label.

There is no scientific alternative to evolution. ID claims to be such, but after reading a 30-page essay on the topic by ID luminaries (found here as the essay written by Calvert and Harris) and about 1/3 of "Of Pandas and People" (I haven't stopped reading it, I just haven't finished), I'm confident that ID is simply a screed against evolution. It basically says, "thus and such doesn't makes sense so God (well, an Intelligent Agent, nudge, nudge) did it". It makes no predictions, it makes no attempt to explain anything.

I just had to go search for more info on RFID implants because sooner or later bills will be proposed by somebody that they be introduced, initially on a voluntary basis....

Back in July silicon.com reported the following: "Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged. Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specialises in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets. To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin." http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,391505 25,00.htm/

December 2003 - Subdermal RFID chip provokes furore http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/subdermal_ rfid_chip_provokes_furore/

October 2004 - FDA approves computer chip for humans - nice pic of an implant next to George Washington... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

This article was followed up in November 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2109477/
Verisign thoughtfully provide a method to save you getting your child swapped in the hospital. "The number of total switching incidents is as high as 20,000 per year in the U.S." But don't worry. In this case the tag is not implanted... http://www.verichipcorp.com/

...unlike the VeriKid service provided by the Mexican distributors of verisign technology: http://www.solusat.com.mx/index1.html http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60771, 00.html

Although RFID implants have their detractors...

http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.notags.co.uk/page26.html
http://www.rfidconcerns.com/
http://www.shire.net/big.brother/digitalangel.htm
http://whiterose.samizdata.net/archives/cat_identi ty_cards.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/impl anting_chip.html

...they seem to be popular with body piercing fans: Amal Graafstra Gets an RFID Implant http://www.bmezine.com/news/presenttense/20050330. html
And the odd geek or two: http://www.x11.net/wiki/index.php/My_RFID_Implant He has mp4 video footage of the implanting procedure. It doesn't sound like he will want to remove this implant anytime soon - OUCH!

The Mexican Government - "Mexico's Attorney General required the Mark of the Beast in a 160 people. Thousands more are now planned..." http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm

And the European Parliament! "Brussels: 'Implants to track people are OK'". http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39128836,00.htm/

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Lord Acton (1834-1902)

I just had to go search for more info on RFID implants because sooner or later bills will be proposed by somebody that they be introduced, initially on a voluntary basis....

Back in July silicon.com reported the following: "Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged. Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specialises in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets. To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin." http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,391505 25,00.htm/

December 2003 - Subdermal RFID chip provokes furore http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/subdermal_ rfid_chip_provokes_furore/

October 2004 - FDA approves computer chip for humans - nice pic of an implant next to George Washington... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

This article was followed up in November 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2109477/
Verisign thoughtfully provide a method to save you getting your child swapped in the hospital. "The number of total switching incidents is as high as 20,000 per year in the U.S." But don't worry. In this case the tag is not implanted... http://www.verichipcorp.com/

...unlike the VeriKid service provided by the Mexican distributors of verisign technology: http://www.solusat.com.mx/index1.html http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60771, 00.html

Although RFID implants have their detractors...

http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.notags.co.uk/page26.html
http://www.rfidconcerns.com/
http://www.shire.net/big.brother/digitalangel.htm
http://whiterose.samizdata.net/archives/cat_identi ty_cards.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/impl anting_chip.html

...they seem to be popular with body piercing fans: Amal Graafstra Gets an RFID Implant http://www.bmezine.com/news/presenttense/20050330. html
And the odd geek or two: http://www.x11.net/wiki/index.php/My_RFID_Implant He has mp4 video footage of the implanting procedure. It doesn't sound like he will want to remove this implant anytime soon - OUCH!

The Mexican Government - "Mexico's Attorney General required the Mark of the Beast in a 160 people. Thousands more are now planned..." http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm

And the European Parliament! "Brussels: 'Implants to track people are OK'". http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39128836,00.htm/

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Lord Acton (1834-1902)

Edmund Morris wrote a biography about Ronald Reagan in which he (Morris) interjected himself into history, appearing as an active participant in Reagan's life at various "important" times in Reagan's career. He then tried to fob this fantabulous concoction off onto the public as legitimate history.

Despite his (apparently) eminent status as a historian,the people "spoke", the book flopped, and even the lit crit world and his publisher became shy about the whole thing.

Sadly he's not the only one to have gotten away with it. Where are those meddling kids when you need them? http://slate.msn.com/id/1007896/

Is this the same Steven Johnson that wrote this load of crap two years ago?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/

His argument (and I use that term advisedly) was that when you use Google, really stupid searches (like for "flowers" alone or "steven" alone) get bad results, so good searches must be getting bad results too. To see how badly he got roasted on that article, you can go into their "fray"

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&nav= navof

and do a search for articles before 07/17/03 (the day after the article was put on the web) to see the comments of the people around that time. (I'd link the search, but it doesn't seem to let me.)

Now, I know Johnson had a point, and after tons of criticism he eventually put one together, but that hastily thrown-together-argument should have been in the article the first time around. You can see his pitiful attempts to defend this earlier article here, which is the list of his posts on the Fray:

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&acti on=morebyuser&m=8603692

Is this the same Steven Johnson that wrote this load of crap two years ago?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/

His argument (and I use that term advisedly) was that when you use Google, really stupid searches (like for "flowers" alone or "steven" alone) get bad results, so good searches must be getting bad results too. To see how badly he got roasted on that article, you can go into their "fray"

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&nav= navof

and do a search for articles before 07/17/03 (the day after the article was put on the web) to see the comments of the people around that time. (I'd link the search, but it doesn't seem to let me.)

Now, I know Johnson had a point, and after tons of criticism he eventually put one together, but that hastily thrown-together-argument should have been in the article the first time around. You can see his pitiful attempts to defend this earlier article here, which is the list of his posts on the Fray:

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&acti on=morebyuser&m=8603692

Is this the same Steven Johnson that wrote this load of crap two years ago?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/

His argument (and I use that term advisedly) was that when you use Google, really stupid searches (like for "flowers" alone or "steven" alone) get bad results, so good searches must be getting bad results too. To see how badly he got roasted on that article, you can go into their "fray"

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&nav= navof

and do a search for articles before 07/17/03 (the day after the article was put on the web) to see the comments of the people around that time. (I'd link the search, but it doesn't seem to let me.)

Now, I know Johnson had a point, and after tons of criticism he eventually put one together, but that hastily thrown-together-argument should have been in the article the first time around. You can see his pitiful attempts to defend this earlier article here, which is the list of his posts on the Fray:

http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&acti on=morebyuser&m=8603692

msn search

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Windows+sucks &FORM=MSNH&srch_type=0

compared to google

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Windows+sucks& btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Thanks for you insightful comments.. Good bye now.

From the slashdot article "quoting" Microsoft: According to Microsoft, 'when you have a company of 60,000 employees, people are coming and going all the time.

But in this Slate article is the snippet that we continue to have the lowest turnover in the industry? , (as part of a question Bill Gates raised about continuing to make Microsoft an attractive place to work).

Seems these two statements conflict, both tailored to serve the spin necessary. So, what is it? Is Microsoft suffering from an exodus or do they truly have one of the lowest turnovers in the industry?

I think you are searching microsoft's home page, not using MSN search. If that's the case, well, duh.

Crawl-delay: number_of_seconds

Well, it appears Micro$oft has been caught with it's hand in the cookie jar and has 'corrected' the 'search flaw'.

I don't think that Microsoft will try to outgoogle Google by making their search engine a beacon of simplicity as it appear to be right now, but instead they will try to solve everyones problem by putting every feature they can think of in the user interface and making their search box appear everywhere they can.

Meanwhile, Google will continue to evolve their ui to be even more simple and easier to use and add new technology as new services instead of putting it all on the search page.

How much better than Google does MS Search have to be to start pulling over users from Google? Does MS have any new technology that Google don't have access to? I don't think so.

"He admitted Apple had had the biggest bite out of the digital music business with its iPod and iTunes success, and wished that Microsoft and its device partners had a bigger share.

But he stressed that, in most part, Microsoft was not about making devices.

"Our success is overwhelmingly greater than theirs [Apple's] is - they are learning from us every step of the way and we are learning from them," he said."

Huh. How can their success be greater when the iTunes Music Store has a 85% market share?

Try it out: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linux&FORM=QB HP

Are you referring to this theory?

The main virtue of PET is that it is fully recyclable. Unlike other plastics, its polymer chains can be recovered for additional use. PET has a resin identification code of 1.

Assembly, test, launch, and a year of operations of each rover cost about $425 million, or about the same amount of money as it cost to make the movies Titanic (1997) and Pearl Harbor (2001). This amount was also equivalent to what it costs to launch a single space-shuttle mission...

Is anyone still surprised that students think censorship is a good thing? I mean, it protects you from people who lie about you, sexual predators, factual errors... what a great thing, to have someone else approve what you say before you say it? It make me feel so safe.

This group will attempt to "push the open source idea deeper into computing"

How much deeper can they go?

When you have a breakdown in the executive compensation process in which CEOs are receiving undeserved pay, it is an indication that there is a power imbalance in the boardroom... [and] when you have a weak board of directors, that is where you have broader corporate governance breakdowns which can include accounting fraud.

OK. I had to look at about a dozen online dictionaries before I found one that seems to confirm my statement.

From : http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/ DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861620125

against law: contravening a specific law, especially a criminal law

I probably should have said that it seemed to imply a criminal violation to me, as clearly many definitions of the word illegal do not imply criminal violation, as in illegal pass interference, or illegal syntax.

Point taken.

--Barry

Oh, and the execs got about 6% pay increase this year.

Only 6%? That's not much... 2003 saw the average Fortune 500 CEO's salary up 22.18%.

In 1992 the average CEO made 82x the average employee's salary. By 2004 this ratio has climbed to 400x.

Don't forget Gary Smith who was awarded $41.2 million for overseeing the elimination of 93% of Ciena's value in just 4 years.

While Google is the *best* commercial search engine it completely ignores the most useful information that can be found through the "Invisible Web" research.

Sure if you wanna find this or that web site or quick info, Google is great. But when you want to find something truly meaningful that you can use as reference, try http://lii.org/ or http://dmoz.org./ Of course this requires subject search (much like going to the library) and recognizing the set of terms you want to find. I just discovered http://www.factbites.com/ is a decent search engine Web site that digs through other "invisible web" sites to deliver results.

People really have to get out of this "Google or bust" mentality if they want to get any real research done.

If you're *really* desperate for a commercial search engine, just go with www.dogpile.com it compiles searches from yahoo, google, jeeves and MSN Search.

ps: PageRank flaws are considered "GoogleHoles" coined by Steven Johnson
http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/

"It will go to the Swahili alphabet or something else," joked Jim Lushine, severe weather expert at the National Weather Service in Miami.

Actually, when old names are retired, new names have to be drafted in to a database maintained specifically for Atlantic Ocean storms, said Mark Oliver, spokesman for the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, which maintains the database.

> > Wrong. I didn't use either term.
> Perhaps not, but you supported
[ ... yada yada ]

Enough. Stop being a fool. You were wrong - deal with it.

> > Wrong. To be against 'discarding' fertilized embryos and is not to
> > be against in-vitro fertilization.
> Do you know of any doctor practicing in-vitro fertilization without
> creating extra embryos

Yes, it's done like this abroad:
From http://www.ivf-infertility.com/ivf/standard/regula tions.php :
Dr Samuel Marcus
11-Jun-2004 12:44 ...
New Italian laws (2004) ban both freezing and destroying embryos, limit to three the number of eggs to be fertilized and state that all the created embryos must be transferred. Furthermore, they restrict the use of assisted conception treatments to infertile couples.

Embryo adoption is a possibility for existing embryos. See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4931567
A couple mentioned in the story had 9 extra embryos and donated them to another infertile couple, who committed to implanting all 9 extra embryos in separate IVF cycles (only one resulted in a child.)

> Even if they aren't destroyed, they can only legally be used
> by the people who created them.
Included adopted out. See also : http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=10844 7

> If they aren't going to use them, they're essentially in limbo.
> Or they're destroyed. I suppose you could theoretically support some
> hypothetical in-vitro procedure where only one embryo is created at a
> time, and then implanted, but the fact is that that's not how it's
> done.
Wrong again - it's real, not hypothetical, see Italian law above. Also from http://slate.msn.com/id/2120222/#Correction :
Five days ago, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., suggested that the United States should follow countries that "limit the number" of eggs fertilized in vitro to "one or two at a time."

No, journalists don't make it up out of thin air. Well, unless we're talking about fringe publications like The New York Times or The New Republic ...or, er, the BBC itself, come to think of it. But I digress.

Anyway, if the reporter could have gotten one of the mission PIs or any prominent climatologist to voice this idea on the record, he would have. An anonymous "expert" can be anyone at all. It can be any random fool with a PhD, or the local high-school teacher, for all we know. The fact that he had to go with a limp and vague "people say..." tells you a lot, if you read between the lines a bit.

Furthermore, he didn't quote his "experts," and this tells you a lot, too. Maybe he asked an expert whether this mission might return some data that gives some insight into Terrestrial global warming, however small, and the expert laughed and said "Sure! Anything's possible!" And there's your "expert opinion." Only, the reporter can't quote him precisely because it would clearly not be the same thing as Herr Professor Doktor furrowing his brow and saying "We MUST have zis mission or ze race is doomed, I tell you, DOOMED to boil in the fetid heat of its own emissions!" (Cue dramatic music...) Again, if the reporter could have gotten someone to make a definite strong statement ("The Venus Express will tell us what we can expect from global warming here on Earth, and that's important."), he would have done so and used it. Remember the Sherlock Holmes reflection on the dog that failed to bark in the night.

As for the second part of your comment, sure, extra data is always helpful, if only marginally so. No doubt data from Venus isn't utterly worthless in terms of insight into Earth's atmosphere. No one's going to refuse to look at it, if they get it for free. But pay 220 million euros to get it??! That much bread will buy a lot of stratospheric balloon missions, or open-ocean buoys, or supercomputer simulation time, or experiments in the upper-atmosphere simulation chamber, or -- but you get the idea.

"It seemed like a good idea. Let a lone rat loose on a rodent-free island and then figure out how to kill it. That way, when other islands are invaded by rats, you'll know what to do.

Scientists figured they'd trap this foot-long varmint in no time.

Eighteen weeks later, they finally trapped it with some fresh penguin bait. On another island."

And it includes little details, like they used PENGUINS as bait
I can hear PETA cranking up their war machine.

"In September 2005, a report by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health organisation, UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, put the total predicted number of deaths due to the accident at 4,000. This predicted death toll includes the fifty workers who died of acute radiation syndrome as a direct result of radiation from the disaster, nine children who died from thyroid cancer and an estimated 3,940 people who could die from cancer as a result of exposure to radiation. The report also stated that, apart from a 30 kilometre area around the site and a few restricted lakes and forests, radiation levels had returned to acceptable levels"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident#Lo ng-term_effects_on_civilians

That sounds like a lot of people. But when you look at the numbers getting thrown around when attempts are made to estimate deaths to due burning coal it doesn't seem quite so big.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/

  It has been said but I will say it again... The RBMK design left much to be desired and the safety standards and training at Chernobyl were not even comparable to what the NRC requires. Not to mention the massive design improvements made since. Check out the EPR or AP-1000 for some info on what the current generation of reactors being built are like (for one thing they are passively safe, meaning no electrical power is necessary for accident mitigation, instead they rely on things like gravity and natural convection.)

As for nuclear plants being cheap.... well that is flat out wrong. No one knows how much it will cost to build one in the US which is why we haven't built one in a long time. Estimates are 2 billion, but industrial infrastructure is not in place so the timeline can not be determined very accurately. When there is a chance that things may be delayed even a few months, with that kind of investment the money adds up. Once we get them built they are comparable to what we have now, and if a carbon tax were introduced they would be more economical (plants already pay a tax for their waste storage... but who knows where Yucca Mountain is headed).

It has its dangers, but it is tough to say that it is in any way inherently worse than what we are doing right now.

http://search.yahoo.com/

http://search.msn.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9645594/

Yes, I do realize the source is from M$NBC...

You know what the lawyer said after presenting his argument?

iRestMyCase

- or maybe only in UK courts, where lawyers do dress like that...

Google Moon is here, although it only shows the area of the Apollo landings. There was a Slashdot article discussing it, it was developed for the 36th anniversary of the first moon landing. What I would like to know is, if we were able to do Apollo (and Mercury AND Gemini) in less than ten years, why 1. haven't we been back in over 30 years 2. aren't we going to go back for another 13 years?

And this writer doesn't work for a tech company - it's his job to point out various media flaws.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2127924/

Actually, $1.2bn is apparently less than 1% of the cost of building a city.

And regards the whole freedom thing: I thought that what triggered off this governmental flamewar in the first place was the United States' blocking of the proposed .xxx domain? The UN members only started to get worried when it became clear that the US was willing to throw its political weight around online.

I seriously doubt this will help China repress its people further in any major way, because this will not give it direct control over any non-top-level domain name, or the content of the site thereof. The worst it could do is have Taiwan's TLD reassigned or similar mischief, but it still wouldn't be able to touch the individual sites. It probably won't even be able to touch the other TLDs either - I'd expect them to delegate control of the individual TLDs to the relevant countries, as with the current system.

If you feel your government is the best one for maintaining freedom online, that's cool - you've got the entire .us TLD to play around in. If you feel that your government - which from the outside looks to be getting less freedom-friendly by the minute - should be able to use the internet, the most powerful collaborative tool currently available, as a political lever then I'm afraid I must disagree.

I submitted a story yesterday (rejected :( ) about this article by Gary Krakow which tempers some of the iPod hysteria. I've met a number of folks (some of whom were musicians) that have bought iPods for their "cool" factor without examining all the features, limitations (no 16-bit 44KHz audio recording unless you install Linux), or the competition's offerings.

Archos has had a portable media device that records video/audio from analog inputs for a number of years now.

The figures I saw, said that they were doing it on a shoestring budget. It has cost $2.3 billion to date http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9685477/ and If I remember right nasa has twice this much per year(but nasa does MUCH more than manned space flight).
Granted Chinese labour costs less, but I don't think it's fair to say nasa doesn't have the money.

I think another thing people forget is when it is working nasa is doing much more in orbit than putting people up there. When China is regularly lifting cargo up and maintaining and building the ISS as nasa has been doing then I think we can compare the two.

Until then China is playing catchup and good on them, the more people at the table the better! Hopefully they will do what we all want and lower the cost of access to space.

If direct democracy is implemented in the USA, you better be welcoming your creationist, freedom oppressing overlords.

Aren't there enough sick people that the drug companies can target? Why try and convince others they're sick?

The marketing people and the sophisticated PR people who work for them are doing what shareholders demand of them. They're looking for ways to maximize markets. One way is to redefine more and more people as sick. There's an informal alliance between the drug companies and aspects of the medical profession and aspects of the patient advocacy world who all seem to have interests in defining more and more people as ill. We look at this condition by condition in the book, and what you see is a similar formula or process at work. Every time a panel of experts come together, they want to nudge the boundaries a little further out, whether it's mental illness, cholesterol or high blood pressure.

Aug. 2, 2005 - There are few Americans these days who aren't popping pills to treat a complaint, or to prevent one. From headache medicine to cholesterol-lowering drugs to sexual-dysfunction aids, there seems to be a remedy for every disorder out there--and even some we didn't realize existed (until we saw the ad, that is). In their new book, "Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients" (Nation Books), Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels examine how the drug industry has transformed the way we think about physical and mental health and turned more and more of us each year into customers. NEWSWEEK's Jennifer Barrett spoke with Moynihan, a medical writer for the Milbank Memorial Fund in New York and a regular contributor to the British Medical Journal, about how--and why--drug makers have begun targeting people who aren't sick. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You write that drug makers now aggressively target the "healthy." Why?

Ray Moynihan: The book opens with a quote from a former Merck CEO that it was a shame he wasn't able to make Merck more like the chewing-gum maker, Wrigley's, because then he'd be able to "sell to everyone." I think that does drive the marketing machinery of the drug companies now. Drug companies target lots of sick people and make fabulous drugs that extend lives and ameliorate suffering. But the so-called preventives are where the big money are: like the bone-density drugs or the cholesterol [-lowering] drugs. Increasingly we're seeing the marketing shift to those types of drugs. People talk about the "worried well." There are many ways in which the drug companies target those people.

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Aren't there enough sick people that the drug companies can target? Why try and convince others they're sick?

The marketing people and the sophisticated PR people who work for them are doing what shareholders demand of them. They're looking for ways to maximize markets. One way is to redefine more and more people as sick. There's an informal alliance between the drug companies and aspects of the medical profession and aspects of the patient advocacy world who all seem to have interests in defining more and more people as ill. We look at this condition by condition in the book, and what you see is a similar formula or process at work. Every time a panel

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9728174/
damned hot coffee mod - look what it did to our childern