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The faintest meteor that becomes visible to the average viewer on Earth is typically about 0.6 millimeters across (less than one-tenth of an inch or about the size of a sand grain). While such a speck is here and gone in a flash, the energy involved could light a 100-watt light bulb for about 2.5 seconds, Cooke said.

A slightly larger meteor, just 1 millimeter across and only moderately bright, packs the punch of a .22 caliber bullet.

Spectacularly bright fireballs, for which this annual event is known, dissipate far more energy during their plunge through the atmosphere. A typical fireball, which can briefly shine as bright as the planet Venus, is the size of a marble, about 9 millimeters in diameter.

"Such a critter has a striking power in excess of 1 million joules, or about the same punch as a VW moving at 60 mph," Cooke marveled, "from a particle just over one-third of an inch across!"

Actually, debit cards fees are cheaper, much cheaper. Read this artice on MSNBC titled Visa, Mastercard seen foiling rivals. It's about Visa and MasterCard using thier monopoly powers to try to kill the debit card market (and the new antitrust suit against them).

The Virtual Aisle Tries Again Online

Here's an interesting snip:

While Webvan went through $1 billion in its efforts to erect 26 automated warehouses from coast to coast, Safeway and Albertsons brag that the fixed costs for their online service are minimal. "We have all the infrastructure in place to create a dot-com service overnight," says Pam Powell, e-commerce vice president for Albertsons. While Albertsons also doesn't expect its online business to become anything more than a high-end niche, Powell says the service is also proving to be a useful research tool. As any e-tailer knows, monitoring customers' behavior online is a lot easier than scurrying behind them in the aisles.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/835095.asp?cp1=1

And won't be until January when the new Senate is sworn in.

And when the bill is finally voted on in the Senate, it will include plenty of Democrats voting for it:

In Wednesday's initial roll calls, the Senate voted 89-8 to end procedural delays. Though opponents will have other chances to slow the bill, the one-sided vote signaled that senators realized it was now politically impossible to kill it.

The Senate then voted 50-47 to kill a Democratic version of the bill that gave additional protections to workers.

From this article.

MSNBC has a good article up about this"

A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security bill would punish malicious computer hackers with life in prison.

It seems more probable that they are aligning themselves with the following CSEA proposal. Scary when you think about it, but I gave up posting stories to /. as they never make it...

MSNBC posted this article last night http://www.msnbc.com/news/834647.asp It might be more reachable...

The guy who invented the segway had an ubermobility wheelchair thing.

Enjoy.

The article also says, "Canada's Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world, at about 39 feet. "

You think you're being funny.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/831482.asp

In particular, I liked this quote: "The scientists warned that more fires will lead to higher emissions of CO2 unless policies are changed to control land clearance by fire."

Never underestimate the stupidity of the rabid environmentalists. (Before you say that I'm singling them out, that statement applies to anyone who blindly follows any cause.)

This is for those of you that are so quick to blast Slashdot for posting old news because France already has one. Looks like it's a new technique from the artist's rendition in this article here.

This is for those of you that are so quick to blast Slashdot for posting old news because France already has one. Looks like it's a new technique from the artist's rendition in this article here.

Or for repairing a broken duck.

Personally, I prefer using DUCT tape for most applications, including removing warts. Doesn't work all that well for taping ducts, though.

In case anyone likes to follow the results this late at night.. it appears that the GOP is now in the majority of the House and Senate. And CNN provides overall statistics for the exact numbers between the two major parties.
I also find it interesting that as of right now (3:11am est), MSNBC isn't ready to assume that the GOP has control of the Senate and the House. But everyone knows CNN leans towards the right anyways.

If I've never taken a driving test in my life and was truant during Drivers' Ed, then what would I be guilty of if I have an accident?

Guilty? Of just what you said. Liable? Of what the courts decide.

Schoolchildren know that automobiles can be deadly dangerous. Anyone who hasn't been trained to use one who is forced to use one should be exercising extreme caution when doing so--better to idle all the way than go fast and kill someone.

Let me answer that question - driving without insurance, and driving without a licence is illegal, and a Somalian refugee who's just arrived in the US is no exception to this rule (somehow!!).

That'd be the "reasonable man" standard again. Plus, the task of immigration to catch refugees and give them a good orientation on how to operate in the US.

Do you propose a software ed, and you can't use a computer without a licence?

Funny you say that; you can't use a computer without some kind of license. Even GPL'd software is "licensed" for you to use. (Sure, it's a free, nonrestricve license, but it's still there.) It's just a differnet meaning of "license" than "driver's license."

Trash, has CNN reported that Osama binLaden donated $50million to charity? Noooooooo!

It's irrelevant, and probably wrong. "Charity" has donated a lot to Osama Bin Laden--remember, he thinks that he's doing God's work, just like the Catholic Church or the Red Cross do.

Therefore the press is biased and deliberately glosses over megacorporate malfeasance.

Osama Bin Laden is hardly "megacorporate."

Anyway, the press have hardly been ignoring "corporate malfeasance." Remember the Enron scandal? Or any of the followp atrocities?

The press, today and since the fourth branch's conception, have found and told stories that people want to read. And that includes dirt on Microsoft.

Plus DRM and stuff is in their favour, so the press won't report abuses in this area. Come on - has anybody on CNN talked about peoples' rights to play and rip whatever music they want - timeshifting and spatial shifting? Nooooooo!

Why should they? The "fair use" advocates are, by and large, the same folk who say that "information wants to be free" or that "copyright infringement's not stealing, so it's not wrong."

Even the best CD protection I've heard of can still be cracked via the analog hole--which is plenty for any real fair-use claim.

As for timeshifting--CDs and other non-broadcast media are inherently timeshiftable, while in-theather movies are by nature NOT so.

As for "spatial shifting"--there's the analog hole again. If you really must move your media to a different format, you can either put up with a bit of signal loss or just buy another copy. (And with the doctrine of first sale, you can even sell your old copy when you change media formats, or even just keep the old one as a backup...)

802.11 (for now) is not what users want -- they don't want to be teathered to specific (and narrow) geographic locations to browse, email, etc.!

Initially, you and others might want only use a Pogo-like device around the home -- but pretty quickly you will want to drag it along to the mall and the movie theater and to supper at a McDonalds.

Sure, if you shop, watch movies and eat at Starbucks or an Airport [Airport lounges, unplugged] you will be fine with 802.11 connectivity (but you will still pay a connection fee to every different vendor). So why not make it GSM based, use anywhere and pay a single fee to one vendor?

It's just like cordless phones -- around the home they are great -- but many people have cell phones for the road, too -- and most people don't complain about having two phone numbers and two phone bills...

Grip

While Saddam shuffles from palace to palace, gasses his own people, and forces a 100% election ... this is what his country's children look forward to:

picture

It's time for a change.
Hack his email.
Crush his forces.
Get him out of power.
Do something for the people that couldn't leave if they wanted to...

I've got more and more respect for Krakow's reviews. They seem very honest, and answer the questions most people would have. And, the variety of products covered convinces me that he is a journalist; not a propagandist working for MS.

Even so, I'm not sure I'd want to run into him in a dark alley behind this WalMart he frequents...

I've got more and more respect for Krakow's reviews. They seem very honest, and answer the questions most people would have. And, the variety of products covered convinces me that he is a journalist; not a propagandist working for MS.

Even so, I'm not sure I'd want to run into him in a dark alley behind this WalMart he frequents...

Ohh, and btw, on a $60k salary $145 isnt a lot to give. Try for 10%, its a good number.

What are you, a fucking mormon?

Are you going to admit wearing the magic underpants, or are you afraid that will damage your credibility?

Did anyone ever think it WAS NOT a member of one of the lower MUDRACES?

Any realistic PATRIOTIC WHITE MAN should know better now than to trust a filthy NIGGER.

Pictures of the ape and info can be found here.

More Info
MSNBC The Struggle

Watch out... It just might happen. msnbc

MSNBC Article.

Folding@Home Home

For the real info though check out the Forums

Token link to how my team is doing.

PRIME1

That wasn't the point I was making. My point is that these technologies simply have made it easier to aquire their product without paying for it.

That's true, but neither Napster nor any of the P2P software makers are paying royalties for the distribution of their product.

The RIAA though is using P2P as a "scapegoat" to push New Laws "SSSCA/CBDTPA" to get rid of competition, and to prevent "Fair Use".

BTW, I don't use P2P much, I get most of My Music today from "Analog" Sources "Cassette, LP, & 8-Track" and copy it to CD, which is why the xxAA wants to plug the Analog Hole

And I may be too young to remember, but I don't recall any music company suing a radio station over listeners who were recording songs from the airwaves.

That is because there is a tax^h^h^h Surcharge on Blank Cassettes that goes to the RIAA, And cassettes don't last as long as CDs.

This company has already caused trouble for other researchers within the US. For those who would suggest that if there were no profit incentive this "innovation" of discovering a gene wouldn't have happened I suggest you read this MSNBC article, which contains the following two paragraphs:

In Philadelphia, a university stopped testing 700 women a year for a genetic predisposition to breast cancer because its lab was accused of violating a biotechnology company's patents.

"I'm quite disgusted," said Arupa Ganguly at the University of Pennsylvania, who abandoned years of breast cancer research after Myriad Genetics Inc. warned her in 1999 that she was trespassing on the company's intellectual property. "My work went down the drain."

The fact is that this company just got to a position 1 or 2 years before University researchers would have. While there still may have been a patent put on this information by the University somehow I doubt you would have to pay extortionist fees to do anything related with those genes even if it's just further research by universities.

Americans have already been suffering because of this insane idea that a gene that occurs within every human can become the sole property of a single for profit company. It falls within the government's responsibility to prevent this situation from happening but for that to occur you need a government that is "for the people" not for corporate profits.

I don't think any clean-freak mom in America would want this thing to do it's floors. I watched the video clip in the article, then you'll know what I mean.

First of all, it seems to only floors. And it only cleans "slightly" it doesn't seem like it will go deep into the rug and get that dirt out, it does not seem powerful at all with no adaquate suction.

In addition, it doesn't seem very intelligent. It works by sweeping around an area, then when it detects something, it will go in a circular motion to make sure it gets all of it up in that area. But it can easily roam off and miss a lot. Well, unless you give it a lot of time. In the video, they said it would take 45 minutes to clean the studio. Or a half hour to clean a small room. Do note, half of that time is probably finding the mess. That's probably it's biggest problem. Perhaps it should send out detection lasers (or whatever, the stuff that stores use for automatic doors etc.) to detect if anything is above floor level?

The problem with actually finding the mess in a short amount of time was so paramount that they developed little pods that you put around it, to cage it in so it won't pass them and find the mess faster. While that helps, it really isn't solving the problem. Ideally, you'd start it up and it goes straight to the mess and clean it up.

Right now, I'd consider the thing blind. Aimlessly circling around looking for crumbs.

I wouldn't recommend it. Though, there is very good potential for "iRobot" (the company). Check back in a few years.

This is slightly offtopic but take a look at this article in Newsweek (also MSNBC and therefore also MS).

Hell even go here MSNBC and /. is on the news as:
"Trouble erupted after amateur sleuths at a popular technology Web site, Slashdot.org, noticed that a photograph showing the woman with a cup of coffee was a stock image available for purchase elsewhere on the Internet."

This article was published by the associated press shortly after this slashdot story went live. Kudos to poster for injecting /. into the mainstream press, and to dissy for uncovering the stock picture. Both are mentioned in the article.

First they'll have to remove the story from their own site! It's always great when MSNBC mentions Slashdot. The story is currently number nine on the Yahoo! most viewed news page. A lot of people are going to be reading this story tomorrow.</grin>

The amazing story of Barbra Streisand working for /. as an editor is right under the Star Wars story.

Although I agree with the latter positions of the infoWorld article, I did not find it particularly persuasive. I find an earlier MSBNC (admitedly a most unlikely source) arcicle to be far more enguaging and persuasive as it evaluates more even handedly the historical purposes of copyright and whether or not it has served it's purpose. The article was Copyrights and copywrongs , a historical examination of Copyright which is definately worth a read. Along the same lines you might want to read the letters between Jefferson and Maddison on the issue which are archived in various places around the net.

--CTH

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

You can still get burned by fake escrow sites.
Read this article on msnbc.
Fake escrow sites lure auction users.

Every so often, we put up some auctions for networking equipment. Lately there has been a trend of people bidding on Cisco auctions (see this article) and never paying.

One Ebay user bid a Cisco 3640 router I was selling up to $2550. This same user created his account two days prior, and was the high or winning bidder on over 80 auctions. Here's this user's Ebay winning bid history. Now, I'm not a mathematician, but this A-hole ruined over $64k of auctions. Sure, you can relist and file fraud reports, but what's to prevent someone else from doing this again and again? There's no accountability.

If they would require some type of user verification to buy and sell, wouldn't you think twice about fraud? Furthermore, why can't Ebay red-flag suspicious bidding patterns? I think everyone agrees that a new user probably will not bid on over 80 auctions worth over $64k in a couple of days.

Just my 2.47 yen.

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

I guess they mean since this one .

If you sit in your parent's basement moaning about how you can't afford Starbucks anymore, you deserve to fail. Or you could be the next "Greatest Generation," who make anything that the current genX has to "overcome" look like a tough mosh pit.

This is like an article I found on MSNBC. Even though fundamentally security should be an inherent part of an OS they want to charge for it. Like the MSNBC article that says some phone companies charge you more money to try to shut away the telemarketers, kind of like extortion.

MSNBC has done some surprisingly UNbiased articles about Linux. They have done some excellent articles on:

• Lycoris Linux
• AbiWord
• and the Zaurus handheld

I also remember that "The Site" show on MSNBC was very scrupulous in trying to make sure MacOS and Linux got as much time as possible. The fact that Leo Laporte and Soledad O'Brien were both Mac heads probably helped. If you recall, when "The Site" was pulled (it was getting far less ratings than the wall-to-wall Princess Di coverage) it spawned ZDTV, later to be known as TechTV.

Alas, Soledad, where have you gone?

About Gates as geek deity: the Flynn character in "Tron" was kind of modeled after him. It would be cool if in "Tron 2.0" Flynn goes from being a downtrodden geek to being an evil monopolist who revives the MCP to dominate the brave new world of Cyberspace. It would work.

MSNBC has done some surprisingly UNbiased articles about Linux. They have done some excellent articles on:

• Lycoris Linux
• AbiWord
• and the Zaurus handheld

I also remember that "The Site" show on MSNBC was very scrupulous in trying to make sure MacOS and Linux got as much time as possible. The fact that Leo Laporte and Soledad O'Brien were both Mac heads probably helped. If you recall, when "The Site" was pulled (it was getting far less ratings than the wall-to-wall Princess Di coverage) it spawned ZDTV, later to be known as TechTV.

Alas, Soledad, where have you gone?

About Gates as geek deity: the Flynn character in "Tron" was kind of modeled after him. It would be cool if in "Tron 2.0" Flynn goes from being a downtrodden geek to being an evil monopolist who revives the MCP to dominate the brave new world of Cyberspace. It would work.

• Linux in the palm of your hand
• Word processing for everyone?
• Red Hat's new Linux seeks to unify