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TOO TRUE! Corruption & theft is too common in our Long Island schools.

High-tech purchases are questioned. Invoices show computer store items, bought with district funds, used at officials' homes
BY KARLA SCHUSTER AND EDEN LAIKIN
STAFF WRITERS
June 15, 2004
The Roslyn public schools spent tens of thousands of dollars at a computer store for equipment, electronic games and movies that ended up in the homes of consultants, former district officials and their families, records show.

District opens 2 probes of finances
Uniondale School officials have launched investigations into alleged overtime abuses by custodial staff and are examining financial records concerning a $4.8 million telecommunications project.

Maybe they would not have to consider cutting budgets if there was less theft from the taxpayers.

School districts resubmitting budgets for vote whether submitting same plan or one with cuts, districts face losing backing of key groups or protest vote
More than a quarter of the 45 Long Island districts that lost budget votes last month are submitting identical spending plans to voters starting this week, even as other districts absorb painful cuts in art, music and summer classes.

TOO TRUE! Corruption & theft is too common in our Long Island schools.

High-tech purchases are questioned. Invoices show computer store items, bought with district funds, used at officials' homes
BY KARLA SCHUSTER AND EDEN LAIKIN
STAFF WRITERS
June 15, 2004
The Roslyn public schools spent tens of thousands of dollars at a computer store for equipment, electronic games and movies that ended up in the homes of consultants, former district officials and their families, records show.

District opens 2 probes of finances
Uniondale School officials have launched investigations into alleged overtime abuses by custodial staff and are examining financial records concerning a $4.8 million telecommunications project.

Maybe they would not have to consider cutting budgets if there was less theft from the taxpayers.

School districts resubmitting budgets for vote whether submitting same plan or one with cuts, districts face losing backing of key groups or protest vote
More than a quarter of the 45 Long Island districts that lost budget votes last month are submitting identical spending plans to voters starting this week, even as other districts absorb painful cuts in art, music and summer classes.

"How will they ever be ready in time for the November elections?"

Uh, they are ready...to steal the election for the Republicans this Fall. Its pretty obvious Jeb Bush wants to make sure there is no doubt Florida goes to his brother this time around, so he is dead set against making sure all the new electronic voting machines in his state are verifiable.

The Bush administration has a really strong, or actually overwhelming, incentive to make sure they win. They have to white wash the investigation of who really authorized the use of torture in Iraq. All indications are that it was George W. Bush, General Myers, Rumsfeld and his deputy for military intelligence Steve Cambone under the top secret Copper Green program. They might have got away with it for Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area and may not be under Geneva protections but authorizing torture in Iraq was a war crime under the Geneva conventions and the U.S. laws that enforce the Geneva rules. Its pretty obvious now it wasn't just a bunch of out of control reserve privates doing it on their own.

If the Democrats were to win the White House or Congress and were to really pursue the investigation, which I'm not sure they would, you could see impeachment and senior members of the Bush administration and the military on trial for war crimes. If the Republicans win they can try to stop the blame and the damage at General Sanchez, and if they continue to control both houses of Congress, and they keep their party members in line they will probably succeed. I wager they are already engaged in massive paper shredding and deletion of top secret documents, especially after the leak of the Pentagon and DOJ memo's last week where it became clear the White House was trying, in vain, to establish a legal basis for the use of torture.

If you saw Ashcroft's testimony before Congress last week, a rare event, it became pretty clear the Bush administration has decided they are at war and they can do pretty much anything they please, and unfortunately the "War on Terror" is unlikely to ever end.

But getting a verifiable receipt that shows how you voted, and when its put in an old fashioned ballot box its priceless. You can then go back and do a manual recount of the paper and establish if the machine count was accurate or not.

As long as there are truly random recounts of at least a percentage of all votes cast you will most probably catch rigging or machine errors. I don't care how careful you are in making sure the machines are certified and locked, a paper trail is the only way to make them reliable.

I read an interesting observation the other day. It does appear the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election, both the White House and the Congress.

It appears the Bush administration has, at the highest level, violated the Geneva conventions and U.S. law against torture, perhaps not against Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area but most certainly they tortured people in Iraq who were under Geneva protections.

It is extremely important to the Bush administration that they win the election so they can white wash the investigation. If someone truly independent did the investigation and found them guilty and it appears there is a pretty big paper trail and a lot of people involved, both in recently unveiled memos in which the DOJ and the Pentagon were engaged in a failed attempt to give a legal basis for torture and in revelations about Copper Green which suggest this program of torture was approved at the highest levels by Bush, Rumsfeld and his deputy Cambone.

Today it was revealed that dog handlers who were used in Iraq to scare prisoners were in fact doing so under orders from military intelligence officers which debunks the Bush administration's BS that the torture was just a bunch of rogue army reservists. If the investigation isn't a sham its nearly certain the torture will be traced to the Pentagon and the White House. It simply was a war crime to authorize to the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election at all cost.

If you want to see the latest thing in torture look here.ts Its the U.S. military's Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term. I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them. It appears I now have a good reason to where a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should when I propose the possibility that the Bush administration is, in fact, on a fast track to dictatorship.

All indications are those enlisted men were doing what they were told to do by military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. First you say those people have to do what their told and shut up and then when they do what they were ordered to you seem to be suggesting its their fault.

In case you haven't been following the news the DOJ, White House and Pentagon right after 9/11 were expending a major effort to justify and rationalize the use of torture, and to kid themselves that they weren't committing war crimes if they did. Torturing Al Qaeda is in a gray area but torturing, in several cases to death, Iraqi's most definitely was a war crime because they were under Geneva convention rules.

The Bush administration better hope they win the next election so they can white wash the investigation. They have a real strong incentive to use Diebold's machines to make sure they do. If the Democrats win the White House or Congress and the truth came out, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cambone, Ashcroft and who knows how many others could face war crime prosecutions. Of course the Democrats have a pretty strong disincentive to find the truth because it would be pretty embarassing to charge America's ex president with war crimes. Kind of ironic Clinton was nearly impeached over lying about sex and the Bush administration is apparently getting away with war crimes. Isn't it wonderful when one party controls the White House and Congress. They can get away with murder.

You might want to read about Copper Green, the top secret program spawned in the Pentagon by Rumsfeld, his deputy Cambone and almost certainly authorized by the President. If true there was in fact authorization at the highest levels to torture Al Qaeda prisoners. It appears the main thing that went wrong is they took it from very secret prisons with highly skilled and cleared interrogators and moved it in to a very public prison in Iraq and ordered reservists to do the softening up.

Check out these two articles: This one and this one

Anthony Zinni is not stranger to the Middle East and Israel. He was the US mediator trying to end the current uprising there. He knows the players and the facts on the ground.

MORE MUSLIMS NOW SEE U.S., ISRAEL THE SAME WAY

Wayne Parry, Associated Press, 5/28/04

PATERSON, N.J. -- Israel's dealings with the Palestinians have long been the top grievance of many Muslims and Arab-Americans when they think about the Middle East.

But the prisoner abuse case and America's other setbacks in Iraq are increasingly linking the United States with Israel in the minds of many Muslims, who now equate American treatment of Iraqis with Israel treatment of Palestinians _ surely one of the last things President Bush hoped for when he authorized the war in Iraq.

"The more you look at Iraq, the more you see a replica of what is happening in the West Bank," said Hani Awadallah, president of the Arab-American Civic Organization in Paterson. "The story is no longer that we are there for liberation. It is clear to everybody that we are there as conquerors..."

Televised images of American troops battling insurgents in Iraq _ and graphic footage of wounded and dead civilians _ resonate among a Muslim community long used to seeing similar pictures beamed from Palestinian refugee camps.

At the Islamic Center of Passaic County, one of New Jersey's most influential mosques, many worshippers express concern.

"The same thing is happening in Iraq and in Palestine: One force has all the power and the other side is trying to defend itself and find its liberty," said Nabil Abbassi, the center's president.

"The whole reason we went to Iraq was to liberate it," he said. "What is going on is not liberation. All the problems of the people in the jail and the animosity toward the U.S. doesn't help us. It's definitely heading in the wrong direction. We're getting ourselves deeper and deeper into a quicksand situation."

Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, put it more succinctly: "An occupation is an occupation."

ISRAEL: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T

Robert L. Jamieson, Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/29/04

King County Democrats just pulled off a nifty magic trick.

They made Israel disappear.

Not the country, mind you, but the word -- as it had appeared in proposed language for the party's 2004 county platform.

The plank called for the United States to stop sending aid to Israel unless it treats the Palestinian people with dignity and respect. But when county Democrats, preparing for the big state convention, ironed out the final wrinkles of the platform Tuesday, "Israel" vanished.

Poof.

The whole thing makes me wonder if the "party of the people" is open to all so long as influential toes are not stepped on. Do that, and the Democrats suddenly become "the party of select folks who must be tip-toed around."

I'm talking, of course, about supporters of Israel.

This tale of abracadabra began May 8, when the King County Democratic Party gathered for a convention in Seattle. It was a time when thinking people could put forth thoughtful planks for the platform.

Naseem Tuffaha, a Seattle businessman and a voice of consciousness in the Arab American community, offered this: "We believe our tax dollars should not be sent to Israel while it is in violation of international law..."

ZINNI CHARGES NEOCONS PUSHED IRAQ WAR TO BENEFIT ISRAEL

Ori Nir And Ami Eden, Forward, 5/28/04

The simmering debate over the role of Jewish neoconservatives in drawing America into war in Iraq erupted with new fury this week. One of America's most respected ex-generals took to the airwaves to c

But it doesn't. Just in case you missed it: Evolution does not fit your faith, if that faith is God and Christ. If one of the foundations (creationism) of your hypothesis (God and Christ are real) is wrong, then the whole thing is simply WRONG. You can't throw one away and replace it with another.

Cool. An anonymous coward knows more than the Pope about religion. Arrogant, aren't we?

The Pope stated sometime in the 1980s that christianity and evolution don't contradict, and that one can easily believe in both.

Or you can read the very well written commentary here, and get a clue. Using the same stubborn-headed aspect that you bedevil in others makes you just as bad.

Newsday reports on "Global Brightening". Doesn't this represent a negative feedback process that counteracts so called "Global Warming" in that the increased cloud cover reflects more solar energy back into space?

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

..."drew 2600"...

There wasn't much in Bowling for Columbine that could be called fiction. It was mostly speculation that America's obsessions with war, guns and violence are intertwined and aren't particularly healthy. Fact is America is one of the world's most violent developed nations. There were some specific things in it he severely stretched to make his point, not like anyone on the right would ever do that... Coulter..cough..Limbaugh..cough.

When you get to subject matter of Fahrenheit 9/11 its pretty hard for anyone to be sure of what the truth is. Moore is presenting his take on it which may or may not be accurate. One of the problems is the Bush administration has been actively classifying and suppressing just about everything about the Saudi role in 9/11 and the Bush family's excessively close ties to the Saudi's and the Bin Laden family. If you recall they blacked out the entire section on Saudi Arabia's complicity in the congressional report on 9/11 and there were a lot of pages on it. They have also aggressively suppressed all information about the fact that they let airplanes spirit members of the Bin Laden family and other unidentified Saudi's out of the U.S. right after 9/11 at a time when no American could get off the ground.

It is a simple fact that the Bush family has long running ties to people in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait including the Bin Laden family and it colors their dealings in the area, in the opinion of some it clouds their judgment. George H.W. Bush had active business dealings with them when he was at Zapata Oil. He has an active relationship with them today in his role as spokesman for the Carlysle group which is one of Saudi Arabia's major defense contractors.

To be honest I don't know how anyone continues to defend the Bush family especially the current administration. All indications are that they were completely had by Iran, who through Ahmed Chalibi suckered them in to invading Iraq which is now doing massive damage to America's standing in the world, is making the world more dangerous and is costing the U.S. dearly in blood and money. THe Truth about Chalibi.

How do you keep supporting an administration dumb enough to be had by the Iranian's. What are you going to say when the Shia's take power in Iraq as soon as they get a fair election and Iraq turns into an Iranian influenced theocracy and all of America's sacrifice was for worse than nothing.

At LSU commencement Bush joked about being a "C" student. He is proof anyone can be President in America, even someone as intellectually challenged as he is, of course it helps to be from a wealthy and influential family so you can get elected on name only. Bush is great on rhetoric but he simply lacks the intellectual depth to make good decisions when it comes to the enormously complex areas like foreign affairs and economics. The fact that his administration was had by Iran is a case in point. It was his job to take Chalibi skepticially especially considering a long string of red flags about his ethics and motives, but he, Cheney, Perl and Wolfowitz fell for it hook, line and sinker and its costing the U.S. dearly.

RUMSFELD: Senator, the facts are somewhat different than that. The story was broken by the Central Command, by the United States Department of Defense, in Baghdad. General Kimmitt stood up in January and announced that there were allegations of abuses and that they were being investigated. He then briefed reporters. And I think it was March 20 - there's a timeline up here. By March 20, he went back out again and said that these had been filed.

The idea that this is a story that was broken by the media is simply not the fact. This was presented by the Central Command to the world so that they would be aware of the fact that these have been filed.

What was not known is that a classified report with photographs would be given to the press before it arrived in the Pentagon. ---

The law requires everyone to follow the speed limit and other traffic regulations, but in Suffolk County, exceptions should be made for cops and their families, police union officials say.

Police Benevolent Association president Jeff Frayler said Thursday it has been union policy to discourage Suffolk police officers from issuing tickets to fellow officers, regardless of where they work.

"Police officers have discretion whenever they stop anyone, but they should particularly extend that courtesy in the case of other police officers and their families," Frayler said in a brief telephone interview Thursday. "It is a professional courtesy."

Frayler's comments echo views expressed in the spring union newsletter, in which treasurer Bill Mauck exhorts "you don't summons another cop" and says that when officers decline to cite each other, "the emotion you feel should be that of joy."

Maurice Mitchell, a project coordinator with the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the PBA's position undermines taxpayer confidence in law enforcement.

Angie Carpenter, a Republican lawmaker from West Islip and chairwoman of the legislature's public safety committee, said she didn't have a problem with the PBA's policy because she believes it will be applied judiciously.

"It's the same way they would offer a professional courtesy to a doctor pulled over on the way to the hospital to deliver a baby," she said. "Besides, I can't imagine that if some police officer was to commit an egregious offense that they wouldn't be cited, regardless of who they are."

While this is outrageous in itself, it would seemingly put the lie to the notion that the purpose of such laws in for public safety, since it's no "safer" for a police officer's wife to speed than it is for anyone else. It's a tacit admission that it's all about revenue generation. . . . Remember this the next time you hear a lecture from a cop about how dangerous it is to exceed the speed limit.

It's a great pity that the pneumatic tube mail delivery system didn't take off. It would have been really cool to be able to click on a web page, and have the item delivered straight to your desk or house.

I'm not the original poster, but this is a big deal. The Iraqi oil-for-food program was by far the largest amount of money that the UN had ever handled. It dwarfed the rest of the UN's budget.

(That said, I doubt Putin or Chirac were bribed. Like Bush, they had their own strong interests in the matter of Iraq and its government.)

Here are a few references. You can find plenty more on news.google.com :

'Massive scam' in Iraqi oil program

Get to heart of UN role in Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal

Annan Pushes UN Council Members on Iraq Oil Scandal

3,000 UN Staffers Probed

Bulgaria's President Questioned over Iraq Oil Scandal

Judge Rules 'Girls Gone Wild' Is Not Porn

I'm surprised that nobody else noticed this (too busy making Scottie jokes) but read this paragraph from the end of the MSNBC article:

During the Apollo missions, debris flaking off spacecraft became such a common occurrence that astronauts and ground controllers nicknamed them "moon pigeons." At that time, NASA created an aggressive safety program to detect and identify all such objects in case any were indicative of some unexpected failure mode of the space vehicles.

So, what happened? Was this "aggressive safety program" discontinued after Apollo or just ignored when chunks of foam fell off the fuel tank and hit Columbia?

i read a similar article yesterday in Newsday about Tower Records filing for bankruptcy

The article though takes a somewhat different approach stating that competition from Wal-mart and Best Buy and their lower priced CDs is causing Tower's bankruptcy..

If they actually start lowering CD prices to, say, $6 or so for an album.. i'll buy..

i read a similar article yesterday in Newsday about Tower Records filing for bankruptcy

The article though takes a somewhat different approach stating that competition from Wal-mart and Best Buy and their lower priced CDs is causing Tower's bankruptcy..

If they actually start lowering CD prices to, say, $6 or so for an album.. i'll buy..

The Disney CEO Eisner just got a huge Bonus

Have you heard of Jose Padilla?

Bow before your soverign leader, the Dubya the Great!

"When the [Rover's] radio is on without being presented with information, it just sends out to [the orbiting] Mars Global Surveyor data that's essentially pseudo-noise, that's random zeroes and ones, So we saw that pattern repeat just like we would expect."

To me, this is really good news. From this, I infer the analog/power/RF arena looks good. Apparently, we have a healthy commlink. Its just that nothing seems to be getting written to the port that XOR's the data with the pseudorandom carrier stream. Yet, the machine has enough intelligence to respond to pings.. so the kernel of the rover's OS seems to be intact. It is sure sounding more and more like a software corruption problem.

I sure hope they left some old-style "monitor" programs that they can access from the kernel and have them download and run some RF modulator diagnostics.

This does not sound near as scary to me as it did this time yesterday. I was fearing total loss of RF transmit capability, as in something messed up in the power amplifier or antenna/aiming mechanisms.

Good luck, JPL. I am going to sign off for tonight, but I sure look forward to seeing where you guys have some fruitful diagnostics run by the time I see this tomorrow. Once you know you can throw bits back at yourself via the UHF link, its then just gotta be a matter of reloading some software. I am sure hoping this to you is like some of the stuff I have fixed... the scariest looking ones ( totally dead ) are usually fixable.

GodSpeed, NASA.

But I bet more than a few of the republicans who accessed the open files are probabably ones that have recommended long prison terms for 'hackers'.

And I really hope that This Manual Miranda wasn't the Chief Judicial Nominee...

With regards to the no head scarves thing. It's actually forbidden by turkish law in many situations to wear head scarves. The turkish government sees islam as a threat, and is trying to suppress it. This is one of the problems with turkey getting into the EU, because one of the EU principles is freedom of religion. The french headscarves ban only applies to wearing them in schools, and extends to all statements of extreme religion. This follows from the philosophy that allowing religion to exist in schools will lead to the creation of fundamentalist schools, which would not a be a good thing in the long term, especially since the french government tries to maintain a strict distinction between church and state. See this document and this link for more info.

The above comment has been blatantly copied from this page, without appropriate reference. Please mod this shameless, plagiarizing karma whore into oblivion.

Working as a consultant I am faced everyday with what I think is the biggest failed promise:
That computers would bring about the "paperless office".

Not only they didn't, but they made people consume more paper than ever before. On top of all the paper spent, the cost of printing pages increased, as industry made us believe that ink jets were better, and B&W laser passee.

For more discussion see an article in Newsday about it. There's even a full book dedicated to the question of why the paperless office never came to be.

That press release you linked to is very biased, it was issued by an anti-gun org.

Newsday.com says "The court has never said if the right to "keep and bear arms" applies to individuals."

Which is contrary to the anti-gun PR assertion that this decision not to hear this case somehow upheld a prior ruling that said there was no individual right to ownership.

Waiting at airports for screening that solves only half the threat and can be bypassed easily is a problem. If someone wants to comondere an airplane or crash one in a populated area they can shoot it down or hijack it still.

The solution, of taking money to bypass the problem, is just stupid. "How else are we going to fund all of this?" the jackasses will ask us. How indeed?

The problem was stupid, the fix is easy - quit making the problem. Let people buy tickets with cash, get on with a simple metal and explosives sniff test and go. The costs of our reaction to 9/11 is several orders of magnitude more than the event itself. Restrictions on commerce screw everyone.

That's why a recent delegation of representatives didn't stay overnight in Iraq; they were flown back to Kuwait each night, according to James Pinkerton (who was in the first Bush administration).

That's why the airport is still closed because of the threat of missile attack. (You might have to skim a little to find that.)

That's why the war in Iraq has been great for Al Qaeda recruiting. And we're giving them plenty of great practice, like the Soviets did in Afghanistan.

So how is this good again?

Hmm. I submitted this story yesterday, but it was rejected. I'm a little upset that it was accepted when somebody else submitted it. Here was my source, from newsday.com.

It seems that some of the DMA and ATA execs don't want to receive calls

Based on the natural history or spread of HIV in Africa, Weinstein and Alibek proposed that declining immunological responses to smallpox -- due to the elimination of the disease and the discontinuation of immunizations -- may have been associated with the emergence of HIV.

This observation bears an uncanny resemblance to the observation that eliminating various childhood diseases causes a person to later become susceptible to other illnesses. Please visit the web site, "MEDIA REPORTS ASK THE QUESTION: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE? ". In "Plagued by Cures", "The Economist" observes that the incidence of asthma rose sharply after the elimination of measles, for example.

I would wager good money that Dr. Raymond Weinstein has stumbled onto the cure for AIDS. Please read "Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS". All previous attempts tried to attack HIV directly but failed because the virus (1) mutates too rapidly for vaccinations to succeed or (2) cleverly hides in remote cells that anti-viral drugs cannot reach. On the other hand, this proposal by Weinstein to use smallpox vaccination to close the door (i. e. the CCR5 receptor) to HIV infection instead of killing the virus directly just might stop HIV infection.

I am optimistic.

... from the desk of the reporter

The Dewey Decimal System is a highly protected trademark of Online Computer Library Center -- use it without paying a license fee, and they'll sue you (another story)

From their FAQ: May I use the DDC to organize information on my Web site?

The DDC is owned by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated ("OCLC"). We do consider licensing arrangements for the DDC database. To request a licensing proposal, please send an e-mail message to DeweyLicensing@oclc.org, describing in detail your proposed use of the DDC.

What's with the text at the bottom of the page?

u can ask for the defendant's profits, our view is since we have written to these people three different times, it was certainly intentional and it was certainly

we have no way of knowing until the discovery takes place how much their profits are

Doesn't exactly sound professional does it?

Boo hoo. Aren't telemarketing companies sending all of their business offshore to India? These jobs were going to be lost anyway.

This could be a little off-topic, but the new Prius introduced in Japan has this cool feature - it parallel parks automatically.

New Toyota Takes Pain Out of Parallel Parking

Makes me wonder - the feature does help folks that are parallel-parking challenged, but will it do anything by way of letting them develop a new talent? Sigh!

"I believe"

Shame.

"certainly none of them were used in the overthrow of Saddam."

No?

Seems that they aren't telling you much. Here's a US military source.

Here's a source from a human rights organisation Who originally mentioned that cluster bomblets were being found, incidentally, I couldn't believe seeing them myself at the time, but I suppose they could have planted them. Yes, thats it, those vicious ungrateful civilians planted the submunitions...

Hmm. How do we explain away the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan?

Yeah, I did use the BBC heavily so here's another source and Another and Another...

Hopefully you might catch a clue.

Your grain of salt for the article:
Fox is one of the four motion picture studios in the MPAA that do not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Also beware of the New York Daily News which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware of NY Newsday which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware the New York Post which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware of USA Today which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware of WNBC TV News 4 which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware the Jewish World Review which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

Beware of the California Sacramento Bee which does not share revenue with a major U.S. record label.

According to Gogle News this story is only 12 hours old, expect the list to expand. It is absolutely SHOCKING how many news sorces do not share revenue with a major U.S. record label. SHOCKING I say! This media bias cannot be permitted to continue!

-

The software has already been tested with air traffic controllers.

Clippy: It looks like your trying to land a plane...

And in related news: Plane with two crew members crashes off Cape Cod

I saw this article today and found it very interesting. For all the screaming about the dangers of driving while using cell phones (obviously there are dangers), the AAA study found cell phones to be much lower on the list of problems than one might expect. Far more problems were cause by some very mundane things that I am sure we are all guilty of at some time or another. Notice the statistics at the bottom of the article.

1. Group 1 has these characteristics: (wealth, education, desire to assimilate) = (1, 1, 3). Immigrants in this group are typified by the Japanese and European immigrants who came to the USA during the early part of the 20th century. They are mentioned often in discussions of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Americans of Japanese ancestry volunteered to die in World War II in the defense of the USA.
2. Group 2 has these characteristics: (wealth, education, desire to assimilate) = (1, 1, 2). Immigrants in this group are typified by South American immigrants. Most of them prefer to cling to their own ethnic language: usually Spanish. They are ambivalent about acquiring Western values. They create their own community, which is large enough to support several ethnic-language television stations (e. g. Hispanic television). At the same time, there are notable exceptions among these South American immigrants. The Wall Street Journal, in 2003, reported that several Central-American immigrants admired the USA so much that they volunteered to join the American military and fought the tyranical regime of Saddam Hussein.
3. Group 3 has these characteristics: (wealth, education, desire to assimilate) = (3, 3, 1). Immigrants in this group are typified by Middle Easterners (e. g. Iranians, Palestinians), Chinese, Indians, and Koreans. They enter the USA by enrolling in primarily graduate school or secondarily undergraduate school at the university. They believe that "ethnicity" is determined by genes and that each "ethnicity" has a natural and normal culture. They believe that Western culture is only for "White" people and that Chinese culture (for examply) is only for Chinese people, where "Chinese" is an ethnicity. These immigrants believe that Western culture is equal to Chinese culture in quality and that Western brutality prevented non-Western societies from prospering. These immigrants insist that their children learn their "ethnic" language; if their children refuse to learn their "ethnic" language, then they are supposedly denying their "ethnicity". These immigrants and their descendents identify strongly with the country (i. e. not the USA) of their supposed "ethnicity". The immigrants in this group believe that the American high-technology industry -- and the entire American economy -- would collapse without the brainpower of immigrants. These immigrants have a proud view of their own capabilities. These immigrants believe that the USA needs them far more than they need the USA.

Group 3 is the group that produces most of the Taiwanese spies who steal American technology to give to Beijing. Both spies mentioned in "Two Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to China" are born and raised in Taiwan but emigrated to the USA. Katrina Leung is also from Group 3; she was recently arrested for giving national security secrets to Beijing. Please read "FBI Changing Counterintelligence Tactics". Group 3 is also the group that produces people like Maher Hawash.

Many of us in the SlashDot community attended college and obtained a technical degree. More than 50% of our classmates w

Oh come on, it wasn't "hanging chads" that the Republicans had problems with, it was the inconsistent counting methods from county to county. The Democrats were also trying to count chads that had a mark or dimple, but otherwise intact. As an aside, did you see the story about Gore's lawyer being formally accused of ethics violations (July 19th, 2003 story)? Gore Lawyer Accused of Ethics Violations

Entertainingly, he's currently in ethical trouble with the Florida Bar. Details here.

And somebody please fill me in, but is the SCO hotshot lawyer who lost the Gore case against Florida and worked against Microsoft such a hotshot? It seems to me that he's more of a loser.

Indeed he is, and apparently he's having a few problems of his own these days.

I predict that very soon MSFT will have to lower substantially the cost of Office, further eroding its margins. Better start cashing in Bill.

Microsoft profit up 26%. No sign of any eroded margins there!

Ever wonder how in 2000 there were an unusual amount of "Florida military ballots" that went through the postal system LATE and WITHOUT POSTMARK?

Next election will be even more corrupt for military ballots. Military personnel will vote online in 2004

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/126504_vote14. html

The company that has been contracted to provide this service was just bought by a group of Saudi investors.
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzelec0227.stor y

"Election.com, a struggling Garden City start-up scheduled to provide online absentee ballots for U.S. military personnel in the 2004 federal election, has quietly sold controlling power to an investment group with ties to unnamed Saudi nationals, according to company correspondence."

You wanna see how computerized voting really works?
Go here:
http://www.cntrybob.com/Fun/Voter/voter.html

Why bother to vote at all. Just resign yourself to fighting a revolution. If you value freedom and democracy.

but more important, a link

Actually, looks like Greg Packer is a real person. A real and very *obsessive* person.

Here's an article about him (He apparently makes a hobby of being first in line to meet celebrities)
http://www.timessquare.com/bway/features/feat_guy. html

And here's a picture of him...
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-3r03 20,0,6305134.photo?coll=ny-nynews-headlines

Actually, there's a plan for bailing out of the shuttle. It's not good durring ascent, or above a certain altitude (100,000 ft.?) durring reentry and aproach, but they CAN leave the craft.

The official NASA write up on it is here.

Here's a good diagram of it.

Here's a site with some good info on it, including pics of the tests that NASA did with the system on other aircraft.

A random image of a shuttle crew member training to bail out with this system.

And here's a wonderful article explaining it again with a step by step procedure at the bottom of the page.

The videos are here (where the panel visibly ripples after the impact) and here.

The accompanying slide presentation has the details: the 1.7 pound foam block was fired at 531 mph and, where it struck a T-seal between two panels, displaced them and caused a 4/10 inch gap. This fake wing was made of fiberglass, but given the results, a test with actual shuttle wing material from the Space Shuttle Discovery is planned for today.

Here are some of the headlines from news.google.com:
Shuttle Wing Under Gun
Investigator Amazed by Shuttle Foam Force
Foam theory faces pivotal test
Tests Show Foam Causing Wing of Shuttle to Deform
Foam chunk was shuttle's undoing, tests indicate