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In some parts of the world, GV is a common abbreviation for GATVOL - or "fed up" (to the max).

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,9 294,2-7-1442_1987003,00.html/

Way to go, silly airline!

We can't fill 'em fast enough. No room for these guys though.

According to this article, there was a possible UFO crash in the Northern part of South Africa over the weekend. Admittedly, it sounds rather more like a meteorite strike and some imaginative reporting.

What if someone didn't check their email?

You could always try firing the employee by a text message instead as this company recently did.

What I see there is a Pakistani woman caught with a water bottle full of "possibly explosive" material. They don't know what the material was yet.

This certainly could be "a terrorist caught with explosives", the conclusion you jump to; given that it was a real possibility, evacuating the airport and investigating further as they have done was of course the appropriate course of action for the time being.

But it also seems possible this is a false alarm, similar to this morning when a bomb sniffing dog detected a suspicious container that turned out to be full of completely ordinary rags, or the day before when an "unruly passenger" was widely reported to have "Vaseline, a screw driver, matches and a note referencing al-Qaeda" and then it turned out she had nothing of the kind and was just having some kind of nervous breakdown and peeing in the plane aisles (?), or a couple days before that when three men of Arabic descent were arrested with a bunch of cell phones on suspicion they were going to blow up a bridge but then turned out only to be buying cell phones to resell in Dallas at a profit.

Again, it could be that this woman arrested in West Virginia was part of a real terrorist plot, and it could be that some unhinged lady was inspired by recent media reports about plane bombs to pour lighter fluid in a couple of water bottles and attempt to board a plane. Perhaps there really was a legitimate threat to passenger safety there. I shall be watching the news on this one with interest to find out exactly what happened.

But until we do find out exactly what happened, it seems awfully odd in this case to say "reality has intervened" when in fact what you mean is "partly speculative media reports have intervened".

Hopefully the next time there is a tsunami, Bush wont be blamed for it again.

Become a ... doctor, whatever

Umm, no.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4946229/
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2- 13-1443_1824893,00.html
http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2006/04/very_rem ote_rob.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1:143341452/Long-dis tance+doctor~R~(usage+of+robotics).html?refid=SEO
etc.

an anyone explain the enduring popularity of those voting machines despites the numerous flaws?

Yes.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Abroad/ 0,,2-1225-1243_1896256,00.html

Los Angeles - The independent co-producer of Crash, last week's surprise winner of the Oscar for best film, said that she was broke, a Hollywood journal reported on Friday.

Cathy Schulman mounted the stage at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre last Sunday alongside Crash director Paul Haggis to accept the golden statuette for best film, beating out the favoured Brokeback Mountain.

But the film community's honour for her work has not translated into financial compensation.

"I have the interesting distinction of having made five movies in a row without being paid. I can't pay my bills," Schulman said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Schulman is battling Crash co-producer and former business partner Bob Yari over two million dollars in expenses and bonuses related to making films.

Yari insisted that she go without salary for the five years she worked with him, she said.

Yari himself is contesting in court the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, and the Producers Guild to not credit him as a Crash producer.

Both organisations define "producer" as someone who works actively on a film, and not just finances it.

Crash, produced for just $6.5m, had earned $83m worldwide before it won the Oscar, according to reports.

Well I couldn't find the yachts owned by the Google CEO, but the man most famous for his boats that I know of is Roman Abramovich (owner of Chelsea FC) and his boats cost nearly $400,000 US to fill up. Last summer, a boatyard filled up one of his yachts with several hundred thousand dollars of the wrong type of fuel resulting in cleanup costing "at least a million pounds".

ok even if it's true, who says a guy is " extremely well-endowed" unless they're fucking him (or want to be) and bragging about it or they're talking about a pornstar?

sounds like BS to me

Meanwhile, weeks after hurricane season has ended, tropical storm DELTA is brewing.

I am not misinformed. I am realistic. I live in Britain, but I have also lived elsewhere in Europe. And if the British Police has not noticed, armoured BMWs on the streets with registrations belonging to the new member states. I have noticed. So have many other people who have seen these same ones in action elsewhere.

It is only a matter of time until these push out the local criminals the way the Albanian pushed out all pimps in London. And once they are done with this the turf wars are inevitable. I have seen these turf wars first hand. I have seen the same people cleaning up with machine guns and RPG launchers. It is only a matter of time until British streets see the same.

And while I agree that Bobbies on the beat are best unarmed, it is time to start thinking about arming responce teams adequately to deal with imported crime which has brought its own guns with it.

Firearm incidents are also rising here in Amsterdam by about 20% a year due to a combination of illegal immigration, Schengen, and easy access to weapons from the war in Yugoslavia. In Amsterdam we have a violent war between native and foreign gangs over control of the drugs market.

Since the early nineties criminals are increasingly shot in the street instead of being discreetly stabbed to death in a private place. Nationwide the vast majority of people are still killed in the tradional way with knives. Most of the gang-related shootings in the last decade happened in wealthy suburban areas and expensive shopping streets (or holiday locations like Thailand), which make them more visible.

In the rare cases where a gun is actually fired by a police officer to catch an armed criminal in flagrante delicto, like the case where an Amsterdam police officer caught the Muslim fanatic that killed Van Gogh alive by shooting him in the legs, the involved police officer is more or less accidentally in the right place on the right time and just happens to be cold-blooded enough. Professional hitmen nearly always get away before a special armed team arrives.

I don't think the Eastern European license plates on expensive cars are very significant. That's more likely a taxes thing. It is not that difficult administratively to drive around with a local license plate: you just need a local Patsy to register it for you. There are lots of Eastern European burglars prowling around, but I don't think they drive armoured BMWs.

Easy...
Oral Sex Linked To Cancer.

human papilloma virus...more prevelant than bullets!

(this is mostly in jest)

It looks like temperatures are cooling in Somalia:

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,6119,2- 11-1447_1821590,00.html

i really hate it when people get high and mighty and give glib "it's so easy" responses to pandemics.

while the "1,2,3" reasoning may work in the States / West (and that's a *big* may), i encourage you to find the nearest fireman and borrow his 'jaws of life' so that your head may be removed from your own ass. take your little "changes to social norms", board an airplane, and tell it to the raped and abused the world over.

fucking prick. seriously, what mods posted this arrogant shit insightful?

These guys, while scumbags, have not killed anyone (yet).

Sure about that?

Possibly a story in "Asimov" magazine, or somewhere ... I'm sure it gets repeated a fair amount. Regardless of the source, a quote springs to mind: "Just think of it as evolution in action." It is obviously not evolution when an elderly person who is betting their last hopes on this being real (as I hope to god they don't breed after 70). But for the rest of the greedy suckers who fall for this crap, well, let's just hope it was expensive education. Maybe the kids will turn out better.

Then there are the fools that actually fly someplace for these deals, I guess they get educated most of all. http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,, 2-7-1442_1641875,00.html

from The Ethics of Scambaiting

Numerous victims of scammers have committed suicide or been murdered due to these scams. One particularly nasty type of scam involves getting a victim to travel to the scammers country, usually Nigeria, South Africa or to Amsterdam, with large amounts of cash to 'finalize the transaction'. The victim is then kidnapped, often beaten and tortured and sometimes killed.

This is not a rare event. It has happened numerous times. At the time of writing this FAQ the latest known victim was a 29 year old Greek man, George Makronalli, who traveled to South Africa as part of a 419 scam. He was then kidnapped and killed when his family refused to pay the ransom. A day later, police found George's body in Durban. Both his legs and arms were broken and he had been set alight - probably while he was still alive.

Police brutality? No, sorry. That camera was down for maintenance.

Indeed...

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Because our government never labels anyone a terrorist unless they actually are terrorists. (Of course, Richard Jewell, Steven Hatfill, and Hossam Shaltout might disagree with you)

Conspiracy theorists are idiots - our government commits its evil acts in plain view.

You're right about conspiracy theorists being idiots, but if you are suggesting that the US government never engages in illegal or immoral covert actions, you are wrong. Yes, the government does commit some evil acts in plain view, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also do evil things in secret. You may recall the Iran/Contra scandal, the Bay of Pigs scandal, the toppling of democratic governments in Iran and Chile -- and those are just the ones that got screwed up and became public. Presumably there are others that were successfully kept secret (or at least "plausibly deniable").

http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2- 13-1443_1745931,00.html

This sounds like the end of the drug war to me. First they bring in the coke in a submarine, now they got crack in the space shuttle?

Of course that is after piracy = terrorism, which isn't far off I imagine...

Some of us 419 baiters set out to find and close down the fake bank / lottery sites that are used as part of the scams. Victims are referred to these sites to help with the confidence scam and some even require thousands of dollars to open an "account". One site has services that support every 419 modality that I know of, right down to the "Private Dumbered Bank Account!" All joking aside, not only can you loose money but some have even been killed by 419 fraudsters. We have had great success shutting down over one thousand of these sites. After researching the bank, we submit all of our evidence to the hosting company and for the most part, they are closed. There is now, however, a trend to host these sites in China. There are a lot of bullet proof hosting companies on Chinanet that send all of our notifications to /dev/null. We just want these criminal sites closed. Before your aunt puts her email address into a guestbook.

Quote from the article:

Seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said it caused buildings to shake in the island state for up to 15 seconds, but did not cause a tsunami or unusual tidal activity because it was of horizontal rather than vertical displacement and struck far off the coast.

I am appalled at this writing. I live in South Africa, a country considered to have one of the best democracies in the world. We enjoy perhaps greater freedoms than many western countries. AIDS is not just an African problem, and it saddens me to see that there still exists this perception that AIDS is fundamentally an African problem. The AIDS epidemic is a global threat, and drug companies are doing R&D to combat this disease. The next scheduled crew on the International Space Station is tasked with various biological and medical experiments, including one focusing on research for a vaccination against the virus that causes Aids.

Your comment "Africa is also a heavily divided continent, with the spread of Islam coming in through the north" is rather naive. Most African countries have a large ethno- and religious diversity. In South Afrca, we have various Christian religious groups, as well very large concentrations of Islamic, Moslem and even Jewish Faiths. In fact, one of the successes of South Africa's very highly regarded Constitution is that it does not include factions from specific religions. South Africans (as many other African countries citizens) enjoy freedom both of expression and religion.

It's about time that people from non-African countries stop taking what they see on *old* National Geographic Africa specials as African fact. There are many many Africans who are technologically more qualified than many American PHd's.

I've submitted the story, but I think it'll take a while. A south african newspaper is reporting that ebay has been hacked and 400,000 credit card numbers (complete with CCV) have been compromised. The story is here. It's from a reliable publication in this country, so please hurry up and post this so folks can start cancelling cards. Sorry about the OT post.

Doctors Flee Iraq (the Iraqi bloggers out there have been writing about this, too... pretty much everyone with a good educational background who can are leaving. Mostly not due to the insurgency, but due to the kidnappings/crime/instability/checkpoints/power/et c.)

Transsexuals in Olympics

Chinese fucking it up

fuckign slashdot

Why is it that so many people refuse to take 'we don't know yet' as an acceptable answer?

The same reason religion and all of it's pitiful, half assed explanations of phenomena are somehow accepted as divine intervention.

Fortunately, science is constantly debunking God's miracles and finding new mysteries that God has not yet horned in on.

The US installed Duvallier. Then they installed Aristide. Twice! Then when he asked for help again, they forcibly removed him and are now supporting the rebels.
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

Get a clue. Read a newspaper. Turn on the television news. Pull your head out of your ass.

Saddam Hussein Walks Out On Stage Right When The Script Demanded It

> FLASHBACK: U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood predicted imminent Saddam capture 10 days ago: A member of The Pantagraph editorial board -- not really expecting an answer -- asked LaHood for more details, saying, Do you know something we don't?

Yes I do, replied LaHood.

> Saddam 'had time to commit suicide': Yet chose to spend the rest of his life in a torture camp: WHY? Why did the 'evil tyrant' cower in a cellar? Unless of course this was a stage-managed theatre production.

> FLASHBACK: Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot: Their gopher boy all along.

> FLASHBACK: Iraqi Commander Swears He Saw USAF Fly Saddam Out Of Baghdad

> FLASHBACK: Iran continues to raise secret deal claim: US flew Saddam out of Baghdad in April

> FLASHBACK: Look at how many arrests they have faked in the past dd

Looks like the headline-grabbers like Pataki and Bloomberg, amongst others, now have little to say about their quick denouncements of Canada for the whole power mess. Interesting that this is the same reaction pattern for the current Canadian internet pharmacy spat, where FDA commissioners are now publicly alleging Canadian drugs to be unsafe. Is 'mouth off first and ask questions later' now an official US political strategy?

The other stuff is probably just as boring as well though. Probably stuff like this that I originally heard about this a couple weeks ago:

slow night-type news article

Not that it was a big story last week or anything, I'm just a step ahead of the game lately. Probably that's why I had first post this article.

Also, when will the U.S. invade Russia, it already has nuclear weapons and are in a very large threat of going into the wrong hands with Russia's state right now.

BTW, this is to both sides of the argument: insulting someone doesn't help out the argument.

And, frankly, I am still waiting for my robot-butler.

This is purely personal, but I think that AI is a pipe-dream.

Let's face it: I don't think anyone can imitate life -- and its millions of years of evolution -- and its highly complex (albeit crufty) DNA information structure using 0s and 1s.

At least not using the useful, but limited, paradigms of Turing Machines and Von Neumann models (and programming languages and...).

Maybe quantum computers will be able to make it, but that's not before another 20-to-50 years of development and refinement.

Plus, the number 1 problem of humanity now is not robots replacing humans, it is ecological problems, such as pollution, water use, and deforestation. Not to mention unknown killer viruses and North/South inequality...

When we have these problems licked, I believe a robotic society won't be such a big problem after all...

Do you think this could boost payloads delivered from small non-NASA suborbitals like Rutan's:

SpaceShipOne?

It would be great if you could just fly up to the edge of space, chuck your payload up, have a tether catch it and then land. Very cheap compared to rockets.

Also I wonder if the tether guys are working with: Carbon Fiber 60% stonger than steel

Nigeria has bigger problems than e-mail scam artists

• Why does the lack of a vaccine indicate it is man-made? Before we (humans) created the first vaccine, there were no vaccines at all - I certainly don't think that implies all viruses that existed before that point in time were man-made.
  
• How does an "unclear makeup" indicate it is man-made? If the virus contains DNA that isn't similar to anything else ever sequenced (if that is what is meant), I don't see how that would indicate it necessarily being man-made (I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that I don't see how it is proof).
  
• I'm also not clear how the population not being immune to it indicates it is man-made. Unfortunately, I'm not an epidemiologist (IANAE?), so it is hard for me to comment on this.
  

But wait, there's more!.

So you may se 'em flying still.

Virgin Atlantic has offered to buy the Concord fleet...for one pound british sterling ($1.6). Shoot, I'll give 'em $10. Do I hear $20?

Article here...

Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson said on Thursday his airline was interested in buying British Airways' doomed Concorde fleet, but would offer just £1 (1.5, $1.6).

Here's the article.

Is that a lot? Tyson got $17 million for losing.

This article tells how britney and a few others are to start speaking out against online piracy.

The US, in effect, used legal pretense to abduct a visiting foreign national for breaking our laws while living and and a citizen of another country.

It's called being arrested and it happens everyday to citizens and non-citizens alike. It's legal and there are restrictions on how loing someone can be detained without being formally charged and getting access to an attorney. Furthermore Skylarov was not 'abducted' - he came to the U.S. on his own accord to attend a conference. His company was doing business in the U.S. through a distributor and he was also an officer of the company. Now I think the whole Skylarov affair is a unjust travesty, but as far as I can tell it's all being handled legally. It's just that Adobe is taking advantage of a very bad law.

If another country, say Iran, had imprisoned a US citizen for speaking his mind while living in the US, the Marine Corps battle flag would be flying over the rubble of Teheran by now.

You might want to check out what happened to this guy who was imprisoned in Iran for teaching dancing in the U.S.. It's not clear if he was a U.S. citizen or just a permanent resident, but so far no Marine Corp flag over the rubble of Teheran.

As, then, will this concept of having your travel restricted by exercising your (US) rights.

Well no one is preventing you from travelling where ever you want to, but it may not be 'prudent' to travel to certain countries. For example, if you've ever been a citizen of China, you might want to think twice before criticizing the Chinese government here in the U.S., that is, if you ever want to visit there (and leave) in the future.

"More responsible", in this case, is like limiting your speed to 90 MPH on icy streets in a school zone instead of 100 MPH. The hilarity of the Kyoto protocol is that it would only require (some) nations to cut back their greenhouse-gas emissions 10% from the levels of 1990. Never mind that stabilizing the atmospheric levels of CO2 needs something close to a 70-80% reduction. The Kyoto accords are thus exposed as a political mountain superimposed over an ecological molehill.

Ironically, the USA could probably get that 10% in short order and without a lot of hassle. Simply replacing the SUV as a commuter vehicle with something similar to this Volkswagen supercar would cut total vehicular emissions by roughly half, or total emissions by about a quarter. Another large chunk could be slashed off consumption by over-riding state laws on overall truck length and allowing truckers to put aero gear (boat tails and such) on their rigs and trailers; streamlining can cut drag (and power requirements) by more than 75% over what it takes to drag a square-cornered box through the air.

We could take other large pieces out of fuel consumption (and emissions) using technology such as co-generation; wherever heat is required, burn fuel in an engine instead of a furnace and use the engine's heat emissions for the original purpose, while diverting the engine's power output to some other purpose and replacing the fuel that would have gone to that. As an example, if you need 100 KWH of heat (I'm using KWH throughout here; if you want to convert to BTU, consult an engineering book) you could burn 103 KWH worth of gas in a 97% efficient furnace. Or you could burn gas in a co-generator; if it yielded 30% out the crankshaft and 3% heat losses, you'd burn 149.3 KWH of gas to get your 100 KWH of heat, and also yield 44.8 KWH of work out the crankshaft. If you turned a generator, your 44.8 KWH output for the extra 46.3 KWH of input is 97% efficiency compared to a typical 30% at the average steam-cycle powerplant or 60% at the best combined-cycle gas turbine powerplants. The electric load could be supplied with between 1/3 and 2/3 the fuel, at least while heat was required.

To the dyed-in-the-wool cynics and curmudgeons, the insistence of our "America First" regime that more oil is still The Way To Go, and the technophobia of the opposition, are screamingly funny. Neither one of them has even half a clue, and neither one is ever going to get where they claim to want to go unless they're dragged, kicking and screaming, against the special interests who keep them in office.