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Since you obviously have information not available to anyone else about whether or not a crime was committed.

Considering that Plame was last overseas undercover in 1997 and the name became public in 2003 (and it may very well not have been leaked considering Joe Wilson's wife is listed in "Who's Who"...), it would be a bit hard to break a law with a five-year limit, now wouldn't it?

You need to read Plame's Lame Game and A Nutty Little Law.

Some excerpts:

Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.

and

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, notionally violated by this disclosure, is a ridiculous piece of legislation to begin with. It relies in practice on a high standard of proof, effectively requiring that the government demonstrate that someone knowingly intended to divulge the identity of an American secret agent operating under cover, with the intention of harming that agent.

Note that under the law in question, for a crime to have been committed - even if the five-year limitation weren't exceeded - the leaker would have to knowingly leak the information with the purpose of causing harm to the agent. Simply leaking the name to providie proof positive that her husband is a liar wouldn't make the leak a crime.

Get over your hatred of all things Bush. It makes uou sound like a paranoid twit.

Reading the article about JAXA's space plans, I am mighty impressed. That proposed spacecraft to the moon bears a vague resemblance to the early prototype spacecraft imagined by the writers of "Star Trek".

Washington should open up competitive bidding (for space projects) to JAXA. If JAXA has the better ideas and the better technology, then Washington send some money over to JAXA. For too long, NASA has been a space monopoly. A little competition from JAXA will improve the quantity and quality of NASA's production.

So help me Buddha!

Reading the article about JAXA's space plans, I am mighty impressed. That proposed spacecraft to the moon bears a vague resemblance to the early prototype spacecraft imagined by the writers of "Star Trek".

Washington should open up competitive bidding (for space projects) to JAXA. If JAXA has the better ideas and the better technology, then Washington send some money over to JAXA. For too long, NASA has been a space monopoly. A little competition from JAXA will improve the quantity and quality of NASA's production.

So help me Buddha!

With the release of Google maps, NASA's Worldwind, and MSN's Virtual Earth, I don't expect ESRI's products to continue their dominance in the GIS market. Everyday brings new extensions for Google maps allowing the importing of GI data. At the minimum, I predict they'll lower the price of their products.

I know a couple people who work there and they say that tensions are very high.

Consider how earlier this year entertainment journalists rattled on for months about a slump in the American box office--"Box Office Slump In Its 19th Week"--as if it were a sporting event in which the Hollywood studios couldn't get winning hits. The story would have been different if they had seen the data on Page 16 in the 2005 Three Month Revenue Report. Instead of a box-office decline, the studios actually took in more from the U.S. box office in the first quarter of 2005 ($870.2 million) than they did in the similar period of 2004 ($797.1 million). So even though the total audience at movie theaters declined during this period, this came mainly at the expense of independent, foreign, and documentary movies. For the Hollywood studios (and their subsidiaries), in fact, there was no slump at all.

A memo from the State Department, which outs Valerie Plame as an agent, disagrees with your former Niger mining minister. It looks as though the State Department all ready knew that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/20/AR2005072002517_pf.html

If Wilson's trip was approved by his wife, who approved the trips for the administration officials who were on the same trip? Was she the one who also approved Ari Fleischer and Dan Bartlett go along with him?

The only source that I could find that implicates Plame in sending her husband to Africa is the email from Cooper explaining what Rove said to him. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/page /2/

Of course, nobody has any real reason not to trust Karl ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove

random links pulled off of google news just now

http://pakistantimes.net/2005/07/05/top6.htm

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=stor y_4-7-2005_pg7_27

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,15 815164%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8424511/

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-07/08/conte nt_3195248.htm

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?t ype=internetNews&storyID=2005-07-08T133115Z_01_YUE 843230_RTRIDST_0_OUKIN-TELECOMS-PAKISTAN.XML

http://slate.msn.com/id/1007689/

Since the U.S. doesn't actually manufacture anything tangible anymore

Not true. Ford, GM, and many other manufacturing corporation. What is true is that a large part of the U.S. economy is a service economy and also is based on revenues from Intellectual Property. So for the U.S. there is a real value in ensuring that each copy of a product is purchased.

I guess you missed the bit where your referenced manufacturers were rated junk status on the stock market, eh?

"intellectual property" then becomes all the more important for maintaining control in a capitalistic economy still based on scarcity.

IP revnues are important, because if the U.S. lost major corporations that created IP hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens would be unemployed.

You don't read the paper much, do you?

Capitalism is the best method for allocating scarce resources.

Keen on Capitalism?

Are not all monopolies harmful?
Being a single seller, by itself, is not good, nor evil -- it depends on how one obtained that single-seller status. Did one obtain a monopoly by economic competition in the marketplace, or did one obtain it by political pull, i.e., lobbying? If such status is gained by competition in the free-market then the "monopoly" -- the successful business -- is good. If such status is gained by using the government, or Mafia, to force one's competition out of business, then the monopoly is evil.

By definition, copyright is a government imposed monopoly. Therefore, if you are a capitalist, copyright is evil.

I think the real news here isn't the fact that they're taking deposits (they've been doing this for a while), but that Branson and Rutan have started up a new business, "The Spaceship Company."

From here:

But today's announcement reflects a finer appreciation of the financial and regulatory realities. Several months ago, Rutan complained to Congress that U.S. export restrictions [NOTE: These are ITAR restrictions, the same ones which turned this tattoo of encryption code into a munition a few years back] were making it difficult for the British Virgin Galactic project to move forward.

The new arrangement restructures the deal: The Rutan-Branson venture, called The Spaceship Company, will license SpaceShipOne's technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company set up with financial backing from software billionaire Paul Allen and intellectual property from Rutan's Scaled Composites.

The Spaceship Company will then do the actual building of SpaceShipTwos (or Threes ... or Fours) for Virgin Galactic, and for any other spaceline company that wants a suborbital craft. You can assume that the company is structured so as to avoid running into export roadblocks, while keeping the British financial backer in the loop.

But most people are getting fixed interest payments.

Not for the big loans. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8574006
40 percent of mortgages over $360,000 that have closed so far this year are "neg-am" loans. These are a mix of balloon & variable rate loans, but the effect is the same: the mortgage payments increase over time. My point is still valid: if interest rates go up, house prices stay flat, or wages stay flat, a lot of people will lose their houses.

Even if scientists cannot extract the entire genetic code of dinosaurs from the blood samples, the scientists could make educated guesses. They then complete what, in their opinion, is the genetic code of a particular dinosaur. They then inject this code into a de-nuclearized egg of, say, a Komodo lizard to create a cloned embryo. Scientists can then use the embryonic fossilized bones to verify whether their guess is accurate. The scientists simply compare the fossilized bones with the bones of the developing embryo. If they are an exact match, then the scientists have likely cloned the genetic code of a particular dinosaur specimen.

Just to add to what others have said about that claim.

The human body is no where near 98% water.
"In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water." - Jeffrey Utz, M.D., Neuroscience, pediatrics, Allegheny University (link)

Other sources: Boston Globe & Encarta

Funny, I worked on a system (ESRI's web mapping system) that did that fully 5 years ago! We used hidden frames & IFrames, not XMLHTTPRequest of course.

That conjured up an image of Grandpa Simpson, who would have finished that comment by saying "...and weeeeeeee liked it that way!".

There was no good reason to use it then either; it was not at all scalable.
You AJAX dummies are like each new generation: they think they invented sex.

So tell me, Grandpa... why does it work so well for Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth?

Or maybe... just maybe... you didn't know how to do it right. Of course, you probably think you know how to have sex, too. :-)

</feed-troll>

ha, how about a $200 bill with GW on it.

If i remember corectly someoen at a dairy queen made change for a $200 bill that the secret service said was such an obvious fake they couldn't get the perp for counterfitting. The clerks excuse? They are changing all the bills anyways and you never knwo what the new ones look like untill you get them.

and here it seems to have foold others
and here seems to be some more info aboutn the dairyqueen

You're confusing two different issues.

A 1.5" piece of insulating tile chipped off the shuttle itself from a small piece of insulation.

A larger piece of insulation broke off -- one large enough to do the same damage as doomed Columbia -- but it did not hit the orbiter.

It is the latter that is causing this grounding. See this article, among others.

There's an article over on MSNBC with more info about the moon trip proposal. It turns out that the mission design is basically the same one that Constellation Services International, a small California space firm, proposed to the Russians last year. It seems that the Russians have just taken the proposal and blown off CSI. You can see the older article about CSI's design (with a diagram showing how it'll work) here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6558855/

From the newer article:

NBC News space analyst James Oberg wrote about the Lunar Express concept eight months ago: As laid out by Constellation Services International's Charles Miller, the passenger would first be brought up to the international space station aboard a modified Russian Soyuz craft. Then the Soyuz would make a rendezvous with a booster-equipped logistics module that has been sent into orbit separately. The beefed-up craft would make an elongated figure-8 course around the moon - not landing there, but slingshotting around to return to Earth.

Oberg was amazingly prescient when he wrote, "The obvious question is what would prevent the Russians, or some other international space business, from simply stealing the idea and blowing off Miller and his associates."

In an e-mail exchange with Oberg, Miller was "sorry to say" that CSI was not involved in the Russian round-the-moon project, reported by Moscow-based Channel 1 (in Russian) as well as the RIA Novosti news service.

Instead, the news reports say that Russia's Federal Space Agency and Energia, the prime contractor for much of the country's space hardware, are working on the project. Channel 1 says proceeds from the two-week, $100 million tour package would go toward building Russia's next-generation spaceship, the Kliper.

There's an article over on MSNBC with more info about the moon trip proposal. It turns out that the mission design is basically the same one that Constellation Services International, a small California space firm, proposed to the Russians last year. It seems that the Russians have just taken the proposal and blown off CSI. You can see the older article about CSI's design (with a diagram showing how it'll work) here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6558855/

From the newer article:

NBC News space analyst James Oberg wrote about the Lunar Express concept eight months ago: As laid out by Constellation Services International's Charles Miller, the passenger would first be brought up to the international space station aboard a modified Russian Soyuz craft. Then the Soyuz would make a rendezvous with a booster-equipped logistics module that has been sent into orbit separately. The beefed-up craft would make an elongated figure-8 course around the moon - not landing there, but slingshotting around to return to Earth.

Oberg was amazingly prescient when he wrote, "The obvious question is what would prevent the Russians, or some other international space business, from simply stealing the idea and blowing off Miller and his associates."

In an e-mail exchange with Oberg, Miller was "sorry to say" that CSI was not involved in the Russian round-the-moon project, reported by Moscow-based Channel 1 (in Russian) as well as the RIA Novosti news service.

Instead, the news reports say that Russia's Federal Space Agency and Energia, the prime contractor for much of the country's space hardware, are working on the project. Channel 1 says proceeds from the two-week, $100 million tour package would go toward building Russia's next-generation spaceship, the Kliper.

There's an article over on MSNBC with more info about the moon trip proposal. It turns out that the mission design is basically the same one that Constellation Services International, a small California space firm, proposed to the Russians last year. It seems that the Russians have just taken the proposal and blown off CSI. You can see the older article about CSI's design (with a diagram showing how it'll work) here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6558855/

From the newer article:

NBC News space analyst James Oberg wrote about the Lunar Express concept eight months ago: As laid out by Constellation Services International's Charles Miller, the passenger would first be brought up to the international space station aboard a modified Russian Soyuz craft. Then the Soyuz would make a rendezvous with a booster-equipped logistics module that has been sent into orbit separately. The beefed-up craft would make an elongated figure-8 course around the moon - not landing there, but slingshotting around to return to Earth.

Oberg was amazingly prescient when he wrote, "The obvious question is what would prevent the Russians, or some other international space business, from simply stealing the idea and blowing off Miller and his associates."

In an e-mail exchange with Oberg, Miller was "sorry to say" that CSI was not involved in the Russian round-the-moon project, reported by Moscow-based Channel 1 (in Russian) as well as the RIA Novosti news service.

Instead, the news reports say that Russia's Federal Space Agency and Energia, the prime contractor for much of the country's space hardware, are working on the project. Channel 1 says proceeds from the two-week, $100 million tour package would go toward building Russia's next-generation spaceship, the Kliper.

There's an article over on MSNBC with more info about the moon trip proposal. It turns out that the mission design is basically the same one that Constellation Services International, a small California space firm, proposed to the Russians last year. It seems that the Russians have just taken the proposal and blown off CSI. You can see the older article about CSI's design (with a diagram showing how it'll work) here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6558855/

From the newer article:

NBC News space analyst James Oberg wrote about the Lunar Express concept eight months ago: As laid out by Constellation Services International's Charles Miller, the passenger would first be brought up to the international space station aboard a modified Russian Soyuz craft. Then the Soyuz would make a rendezvous with a booster-equipped logistics module that has been sent into orbit separately. The beefed-up craft would make an elongated figure-8 course around the moon - not landing there, but slingshotting around to return to Earth.

Oberg was amazingly prescient when he wrote, "The obvious question is what would prevent the Russians, or some other international space business, from simply stealing the idea and blowing off Miller and his associates."

In an e-mail exchange with Oberg, Miller was "sorry to say" that CSI was not involved in the Russian round-the-moon project, reported by Moscow-based Channel 1 (in Russian) as well as the RIA Novosti news service.

Instead, the news reports say that Russia's Federal Space Agency and Energia, the prime contractor for much of the country's space hardware, are working on the project. Channel 1 says proceeds from the two-week, $100 million tour package would go toward building Russia's next-generation spaceship, the Kliper.

I think they're both lacking. I did a random zoom-in to Riverside from your links and got these two. I hate M$ as much as the next guy, but fair's fair.

I think they're both lacking. I did a random zoom-in to Riverside from your links and got these two. I hate M$ as much as the next guy, but fair's fair.

That day is today. Well, actually, several weeks ago:

http://desktop.msn.com/

Spotlight is neither particularly unique nor particularly remarkable.

But, hey, it's Apple. When they duplicate functionality that was already implemented elsewhere (fast user switching, dashboard, spotlight), it's "innovating". When Microsoft does it, it's "copying".

Give it a rest. It's a little different when you have to support a platform with over a billion users.

MSN Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search will do everything you want right now. This is one of the few MS products that actually delivers.

Run a query then click Favorites > Add to favorites... to save your searches. Drag that shortcut to your desktop or wherever and you have your "virtual folders." You can even fine tune the results.

MSN Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search will do everything you want right now. This is one of the few MS products that actually delivers.

Run a query then click Favorites > Add to favorites... to save your searches. Drag that shortcut to your desktop or wherever and you have your "virtual folders." You can even fine tune the results.

Right, on MSN Virtual Earth the Apple Headquarter wasn't even built. But as you can see on Google Maps...

Right. And comparing the space needle yields different results (MSN has higher detailed imagery). They are both in beta.

Sure enough. More than a little eerie.
msn map vs. google map

and in case you are interested, here's what I'm looking at:

google

msn

the space needle link should be:

http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=47.620 382%7C-122.349149&style=h&lvl=19&v=1

If you take away from the bias and do an objective comparison, VE is quite remarkable, even though their coverage is not as expansive as GM's (for the time being).

Sure, there are discrepencies between the satellite shots (both have missing frames and other bloopers). These are bound to happen when you have a satellite photographing the entire globe frame by frame.

Where I do see more value in VE over GM, however, is in the overall picture quality. Compare these two images and notice the dithering/resolution in GM vs VE:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=203+6th+Ave,+Seattle ,+WA+98109&ll=47.620296,-122.349029&spn=0.005187,0 .009917&t=k&hl=en

http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=41.156 413%7C-72.764616&style=h&lvl=11&v=1

Clearly, VE has much higher resolution. Unless Google bumps up their resolution, I don't see why I would go to them for satellite images.

VE also shows some nice landmarks around Space Needle which quite frankly, are very handy.

Yeah Google is cool company, but is there any reason to use GM when VE offers more?

On the other hand, compare Ewing, NE (where my wife is from) on MSN Virtual Earth v/s Google.

Try zooming in and out a little on both to see my point. Not only does searching for Ewing, NE on Google center it several miles SouthWest of where Ewing actually is, the satellite photos are virtually useless.

My biggest gripes with the MSN service are that it breaks my browsers back buttons and that the URL is not easy to type or remember.

It's clear that both have a ways to go before they will be where we want them to be but I'd give the edge to Google right now.

2004 called:
http://newsbot.msn.com/

Compare equivalent views...

The views are not equivalent. Here is the equivalent Microsoft view, which is comparable in detail and design to the Google image.

Then again, let's focus in on the actualy nearby city of Bridgeport:

MSN Virtual Earth

Google Maps

Funny how MS (outdated) maps doesn't show Apples Cupertino headquarters :
http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?ss=apple& cp=37.333411%7C-122.029708&style=h&lvl=17&v=1%3Cbr %20/%3E
whereas google does :
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.332307,-122.0301 03&spn=0.005924,0.010131&t=k&hl=en

you are aware that ms virtual earth is like google maps, not google earth, right? google earth is a client application while google maps and virtual earth are web applications...

next time, try comparing apples to apples. you might find they're quite similar...

MSN Virtual Earth

Google

• Find out what my relatives are writing across the web (on forums for example) by using my surname (which is very uncommon)
• Monitor the inclusion (not rank) of my webpages on the first 10 results on MSN (The feed only returns the first 10 results).

Check out msnbc.com for video of the launch.

...marking the United States' returned to manned space flight for the first time since the Columbia disaster...

That is not true.

Try this: http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=35.787 293|-79.070408&style=h&lvl=15&sp=adr.7825%20Thornd ike%20Rd%2C%20Greensboro%2C%20NC%2027409&v=1

The missing panel used to be occupied by a supposedly nuclear hardened communications hub. I don't buy it. As my brother used to say: nuclear fallout shelters are simply shelters that would become nuclear fallout.

No SCO

umm, no it isn't.

that said google's still better, because i can see the land down under in color.

In both cases it's obviously something automated, look at these links:
A person would have caught these
http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=36.056 665%7C-79.131897&style=h&lvl=16&v=1
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.054650,-79.13237 6&spn=0.011717,0.020792&t=k&hl=en

I think they're funny

One thing to notice about the MSN map is that the street map is badly overlaid on top of the satellite map.

Here's an example:

2801 N St. NW, Washington DC

well, the square [1] box is on the wrong corner: 2801 is the northwest corner, not the southwest. Also, check out how far off the grid is from the street.

Here is a comparison:

2801 N. St. NW, Washington DC

so MSN is offering higher resolution at the price of being wrong... hmm... I'd rather not have data than have wrong data.

-David

Of course MSN gets you a much better view than Google. I mean come on, where do you think your boss would look first?

Still I'll admit that I Googled for the address and got a hit without even having to drill down!

Is this eerie recording week in science news? First the recording of the tsunami of the Earth Ripping Apart and now this.

MS Virtual Earth WTC Towers

Yeah, they're using old maps. This one clearly shows the twin towers still standing. The pic of the apple campus (or lack therof) is a very old photo.

If you go 20 miles north of Cupertino to Foster City, Microsoft's maps are more current than Google's. Google still shows an empty dirt lot at 800 Foster City Blvd. Microsoft shows the PJCC buildings under construction. They opened in 2004, so Microsoft's Foster City maps are about two years old, and about a year or two newer than Google's.

MSN picture
Google picture

PJCC's website