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So why isn't Christine Boskoff going to be the clear winner for a Darwin Award? The person might have been extremely intelligent, but what can one say about a plan to climb remote mountains in China with only one companion and no method of communication to the outside world for weeks? As the Christine Boskoff Wikipedia article notes, she did not even leave word of where she was going so that potential rescue teams would have no idea where to find her.

So why is it funny when probably uneducated people do something stupid while it isn't funny for someone who used to be an "electrical engineer working for Lockheed Aeronautical in Georgia", "a pilot", and who "designed software for a lighted control display for the C-130J" to do something equally stupid to eliminate herself from the gene pool? Articles I have read such as the above article from 2002 indicate she had no children, so Christine Boskoff removed herself from the gene pool through her stupid actions. Evidently being a former electrical engineer and then becoming a mountain climber/entrepreneur is something that Darwinian evolution selects against. (Even her former husband killed himself in 1999.) So why aren't we all laughing at that?

Not all reports are nice. Seattle had less than steller results with hybrid buses.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/20350 9_metro13.html

I found that while trying to find real numbers for the creep and go of mail carriers.

Reports of taxi driving has been excelent where they spend a fair amount of time in heavy downtown traffic or sitting waiting with the car on.

http://www.fraserbasin.bc.ca/news/documents/04-11- 18-NR-Hybrid.pdf

Matthew Szulik, wearing a red hat. The parent seems 'topical' enough to me.

And for those of us who don't work at Novell and have had a very ambiguous threat made against us by Steve Balmer? Is it a "good thing" for me?

Scott!!

Yeah, I'm with you, pal. When I consider Steve Ballmer's comments regarding this deal, it stinks to high heaven. There's no way Novell or Microsoft will ever square this deal in my eyes in light of those patent threats made by the CEO of Microsoft. Novell's proper reaction should have been to turn right around and drop the deal once they heard what that creep was spouting. "Undisclosed balance sheet liability" my arse.

No matter what Novell does, they still look to me to have been bullied into this agreement. Most likely MS came to Novell threatening legal action and this is how they settled it. We weren't inside, and we'll never know, but that's what this whole thing feels like to me.

http://www.californiareport.org/domains/california report/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2003482836_marijuana18.html

Yes.

With a lowball estimate of $1600/pound, presumably you'd need only grow something like 5 pounds per month to cover your rent and utilities and whatnot.

The problem of course, is that if the windows are see-through for maximum sunlight, you have issues with the police/neighbors being able to notice.

I live in Bellevue, Washington, a large suburb between Seattle & Redmond (the land of Evil).

Almost the entire city, plus the environs, has been without power for the past 4
days.

Ref:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 03482933_stormmainbar18m.html

Thus we are major leaders in energy savings!

Oh and in case anyone is interested in reading the full response from Jim McNerney (Boeing's CEO), here it is.

I'll bet there's nothing keeping you from placing all those pennies on railroad tracks and having a train stomp those suckers flat.

And stop linking New York Times, you [expletive deleted]s. I don't want to fucking register nor do I want to have to take the goddamn time to go to bugmenot.com to get a NY Times uid & pwd. Here's some links that don't require registration to read: here , here , here , and here . Anyway, now that they said don't melt those coins, guess what they are going to do? Melt those coins.

Who can even make heads or tails of all this global warming stuff?

Ummmm, scientists? Just because what you want to believe doesn't fit with the
consensus, doesn't mean it is confusing to the rest of us.

Wow, this venture sounds both as exciting and successful as MusicNet. (Remember when the major music labels tried to do this?)

"kids fear BlackBerrys and Treos can put their lives in jeopardy as Mom and Dad type away while driving."

BlackBerry tapping causes car-crunching chain reaction on I-5

Microsoft astroturf in action.

Cascade Investments, LLC, Invests in Pacific Ethanol.

"For all we know, the numbers are 70% Apple, 9% Zune, 8.99% SanDisk."

You're close. According to this Seattle PI article, in unit sales it was iPod 63%, Zune 9%. In dollar share, it was iPod 72%, Zune 13%. No numbers are given for Sandisk.

It is funny that Big Fish Games can spend over $300,000 on a game but in another turn laying off a people to "streamline" the company (aka people who couldn't play the politics, so we got rid of them).

You can read it here at Seattle Post Intelligencer site: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archive s/107586.asp

The comments in this blog are fasinating.

...its hype.

Anyone remember all the dire predictions that the east coast was looking down the barrel of a gun for this year's hurricane season, and man was the cause? That global warming was going to be driving a huge hurricane season for 2006? This is the slam dunk.

Facts:

1. Warming is taking place
2. The planet is still cooler than it has been in recent geologic history
3. The sunn is in a heating phase
4. Mars has shown an increase in global temperatures
5. There are no SUV's, factories, or cans of Pam on Mars
6. While noxious and bad smelling, man's contribution to warming is miniscule compared to the Sun and volacanic activity

And the biggest fact:

There is nothing we can do to slow it or hurry it along. But, our expenditures of energy and voter goodwill in this arena take attention away from areas where we can be effective:

1. Poverty
2. Disease
3. Hunger
4. Slave trade
5. War

Not only that, but regulation we are forcing upon other countries actually prevent them from activities that could bring more wealth and aid to their populations.

And, regulations are preventing the building of cleaner solutions.

Can we get off the Global Warming kick and turn our efforts, money, voter action towards something we can change?

this is only the US ruling, you can go google for other nations rulings, I believe also they have some problems at least in japan and korea (perhaps, don't recall)

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/

In the US the case still isn't over yet either, there is at least one more state going after them, Iowa, and the head cheeses have to travel and go testify in person

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/20 03342909_webmssuit03.html

You could also get rid of the developmentally disabled programs and plough that money into educating people who might help improve society. I'm not saying there shouldn't be some sort of daycare or burger-flipping training for the special needs set, I am saying that they shouldn't get nearly as much money as they do now. I honestly think their budget would be better applied to programs for gifted children, but the real question is why schools are required to provide for special needs children out of the same budget as the rest of the childrens (won't you think of them?)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 02284831_specialed23m.html

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/ 05/fiscal_crisis_in_special_ed_perils_budget/

Others will replicate it soon enough and hopefully in a better way.

The covenant between Microsoft and Novell is irrelevant, and has no bearing in the discussion, angsts lies in understanding the license under which Linux is governed as an property. Basically it is community property, and belongs to the users as well as its distributors. It is essentially free from control by any individual entity or entities. It's legal standpoint; that if there is any intellectual property that exists in Linux, it belongs to everyone who has the ability to acquire it, and do as they please with it without hindering the ability of anyone else to do as they please also. Microsoft and Novell's forming an agreement violates the license linux as an OS/Kernel is distributed under any associated software packaged with it. No one legally has the right to form other licenses or agreements in the availability of the software in part or whole to anyone without then violating the license, if they do they lose all right to distribute it, and any contributions they have made to it's code base. Novell cannot legally do this as they accepted the license for Linux when they began developing for it, and purchased the 2nd largest Linux distributor, SuSE of Germany. Linux does not deny the right of the users (whether commercial or otherwise) to link proprietary software to it's GPL code base to function with certain hardware, software, etc. Yet if Steve Ballmer's general implication that Linux infringes on Microsoft's Intellectual Property in a society based on the rule of law Microsoft must show where the violation has occurred, not brand an accusation, and start claiming guilt for the potential plaintiff. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archi ves/108806.asp

Look, I have nothing against sports, or sports fans. If they want to go cheer whomever they want, that is fine. Just pay for the building yourself, don't use my tax dollars. Case in point - my hometown Seattle.

Yep. That's why voters in Seattle approved Initiative 91 requiring the city to receive a "fair value" cash profit greater than or equal to the rate of return on a 30-year U.S. Treasury Bond in exchange for any subsidy. It was approved by a 3-1 margin (74%-26%), I think accurately reflecting how fed up people are state subsidies for billionaire team owners (Allen, Schultz).

I call this a ray of hope.

-Isaac

For reference:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/18/rumsfeld/ (April 18th of this year)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/washington/01cnd -rumsfeld.html?ei=5070&en=2148bb81cafef9d0&ex=1163 221200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1163076529-g9kIMjR0v6pCeRK B7CId4A (November 1st of this year)

Source?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=view_oet&address=358x1293 (multiple comments liking Saddam to Al Qaeda who was resonsible for the attacks)
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/20/9-11-and-sadda m/

Actually, we didn't lie. Believing something to be true that later turns out to be false is not lying.

While your statement is true, it is not true in this case. It has been well established that this administration had already planned to invade Iraq before the September 11th attacks and that any information which did not fit the plan was thrown out.

See this link: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,69 03,1185407,00.html

Further, it is well known that what limited intelligence we had was twisted to fit the goal. For instance, when the White House was told by Defense Department analysts that aluminum tubes found in Iraq were actually to be used for rockets, the administration found others who thought the the tubes could be used in a nuclear program. Even then Secretary of State Powell, after looking at the intelligence, said the tubes were for rockets. Guess which opinion the White House used.

Then we lied that Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda.

See the link from Democratic Underground I previously listed. There are several quotes in which Bush specifically says that Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda. However, if you want other sources you can try these:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/attack/140133_bushir aq18.html (Fourth paragraph)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3119676.stm
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0803/080803nj2.htm (3/4 of the way down the page)
http://www.newscloud.com/read/73666/ (Rice making the comment for the administration)

I could go on if you like but I'm sure you can find other sources, including Bush's own comments on the White House web site (if they haven't removed the evidence) which shows Bush linking Iraq and Al Qaeda even though it was well known that Saddam hated Al Qaeda and had given specific orders to his minions not to cooperate in anyway with Al Qaeda.

In case you haven't heard, dead zones (without oxygen) in the oceans are increasing rapidly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/53803.html
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/scifocus/ocea nColor/dead_zones.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Dead _Zone.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-19 -03.asp
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.as px?linkid=59371
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/deadzone_ pla.html?category=earth&guid=20061020143030

Scientists are skeptical of this, calling it "mind-boggling stupid."

In a note to colleagues that was mistakenly sent to The Seattle Times, Worm wrote that the projection could act as a "news hook to get people's attention."

I just noticed the Seattle Times has a fresh article about it..

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2003338593_webmsnovell02.html>Microsoft throws support behind longtime rival Novell's Linux platform

There's a shareholder proposal about this stuff that gets voted on during their next annual meeting (Nov. 14th). There was a Seattle Times article about it last month.

In short, a few socially-conscious investors are pissed about the China blog incident and want MS to pull out. The board of directors have gone on record as being totally against the proposal, and past proposals like this (at MS and other even nastier companies) typically get less than 25% of the vote.

We're talking about a corporation. It exists to make a return for its owners, not to live an ethical, principled life like you and me. Fat chance that this Tipson guy can sway the board and the owners of the company to jump out of such a huge emerging market.

"Current wisdom?" Who is that?

UNESCO, WHO and UNICEF have not exactly as pure as the driven snow. For example, consider the Children's Vaccine Initiative which collapsed in the 1990's due to internecine war between WHO and UNICEF.

The result of this has been a drop in world wide vaccination rates for children.

It has taken a private contributor's intervention (Gates Foundation) to bring this back to life. So much for UN competency.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/africa/policy23.shtm l

"A 46 year-old Kirkland man accused of stalking his estranged wife by accessing her e-mail account and hiding a cellphone with a GPS-tracking feature inside her car has been sentenced after pleading guilty to a felony stalking charge."

Follow the link above to read more about the story.
This story still does not have an ending. My sister has started to be on lots of news shows so keep an eye out for it and you may see her even on Oprah

Yeah, its when I used to get most creative. But better, some of our more inspired kooks come out. Hooray for the last vestiges of commercial free fun.

Microsoft to push parental control New ads promote use of video-game ratings tool

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/288401_msft parents12.html

"A new Microsoft Corp. initiative aims to educate parents about ratings and technological restrictions for video games -- a move that may elevate the company's profile in the national debate over children's access to violent and explicit games.

Microsoft plans to start the multimillion-dollar campaign, including advertising and a 20-city bus tour, today in New York.

It reflects the company's position that existing protections and greater awareness are preferable to government regulation or laws imposing penalties for selling inappropriate titles to minors. Courts have overturned such laws on First Amendment grounds in Washington and other states.

"We should be spending more time on education and less time in the courts," said Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes its Xbox and PC video-game groups..."

An interesting point is at the very end of the article:

"...A Microsoft representative said the educational campaign isn't slated to include demonstrations of "mature"-rated games."

Wouldn't that be the whole point of the education? Aren't "mature"-rated games the whole issue? While I commend Microsoft for putting their money where their mouth is, it seems like they want to avoid debate over violent/sexual games that are played on their system. It's kind-of like they're giving the illusion that they are confronting the subject head-on, when in fact this may only be a pre-emptive move to divert attention away from their more violent games (which I assume have higher sales than others).

With the exception of Senator Chaffee, may his name be held in honor by all free people, every single Republican in the Senate voted for the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Legalization Act.

Take a look at the handicaps the Democrats are under. A rules change a few years ago prevents congressman from demanding information from executive branch agencies, except with the permission of their committee chairperson (guess what party that person's from). "The Hastert Rule decrees that the House will consider only bills approved by the GOP caucus". Put the Democrats in the majority, with a mandate to put the brakes on, and you'll have our best hope.

Which also explains why Paul Allen is leaving Dreamworks.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2003300352_dreamworks12.html?syndication=rs s

It just has to work well enough to get into the first page of results. No one's expecting people to type Mike McGavick and have something other than his campaign home page turn up as the top result. They're expecting people to type Mike McGavick and see "McGavick misstated details of DUI arrest" in the first page of results, maybe one or two links below his campaign website.

It just has to work well enough to get into the first page of results. No one's expecting people to type Mike McGavick and have something other than his campaign home page turn up as the top result. They're expecting people to type Mike McGavick and see "McGavick misstated details of DUI arrest" in the first page of results, maybe one or two links below his campaign website.

It just has to work well enough to get into the first page of results. No one's expecting people to type Mike McGavick and have something other than his campaign home page turn up as the top result. They're expecting people to type Mike McGavick and see "McGavick misstated details of DUI arrest" in the first page of results, maybe one or two links below his campaign website.

Yeah, I was really glad when Microsoft's hit man got busted and all those shootings came to an end.

I figured all videogame voice talent would be normal Joes and Janes that work for the companies, but I guess it stands to reason that they would use real actors in the a-list titles. But after RTFA I think I've suddenly started to like Cortana a lot more...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20061023/450v oice_over_jen_taylor_06.jpg

The cargo container is the network?

What's the point of Slashdot having archives if the stuff in the archives is nothing but dead links? All URLs are "temporary", of course, just like everything else in the universe is. But when you link to Yahoo News URLs, you're guaranteeing that you're posting a URL that will be obsolete before all the other URLs where the article is hosted are.

When you link to Yahoo News on pages that are supposed to be archived, God kills a kitten.

Please, think of the kittens.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/rhymes.asp

I can only assume he is talking about the lawsuit brought by contractors who apparently wernt satisfied with the compensation they agreed upon when they took their jobs, and decided they wanted more:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/msft111.sht ml

And if you take a job with Google, you can still live in Seattle

Is it better to have whatever weapons of mass destruction Iraq produced scattered to the winds, as they are now, or as they were before? Neither.

The thing that disturbs me the most is this. "Knowing" what we claim to know about Iraq's aims and programs, WHY WEREN'T WE MAKING IT MUCH MORE OF A PRIORITY WHEN WE WENT IN THERE TO FIND THESE WEAPONS AND MATERIALS AND PUT THEM UNDER LOCK AND KEY???

It's a matter of historical fact that when we invaded Iraq, we were EXCEEDINGLY CARELESS about allowing Saddam's weapons, INCLUDING EXTREMELY HIGH EXPLOSIVES AND HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR MATERIALS to be STOLEN from *completely unguarded facilities*.. during that period of weeks, even months, before the MEDIA put pressure on the Bush administration to FINALLY go in and lock them up and even then, this was not adequately done..

I don't even know if it has been done NOW..

One would almost think that they covertly WANTED THE INSURGENCY TO HAPPEN!!!

See:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2002076232_weapons29.html

Also, this story was in the Washington Post.. its gone now..

Boy, do I feel secure.... NOT..

Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted:
U.S. Team Unable to Determine Whether Deadly Materials Are Missing
by Barton Gellman

NEAR KUT, Iraq, May 3 -- A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.

The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control.

In all, seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials -- if any -- had been removed.

Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel. Though not suitable to produce a fission bomb, the highest-energy isotopes here, including cesium and cobalt, have been sought by terrorists interested in using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive dust.

One team member said the quantities measured today would not suffice for that purpose, but others expressed doubt that the survey was complete. It was impossible to determine what may have been removed -- by unknowing looters, by knowledgeable thieves bent on black-market trade or by former Iraqi officials seeking to conceal evidence of banned weapons programs.

The most important looted nuclear site, less than a mile down the road, is the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, where U.N. weapons inspectors had catalogued tons of partially enriched uranium and natural uranium -- metals suitable for processing into the core of a nuclear weapon. Iraqi civilians have stripped it of computers, furniture and much equipment; whether dangerous nuclear materials were taken is unknown.

U.S. authorities do not know what is missing, if anything, because of an ongoing conflict between the Bush administration and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as a dispute within the administration about how much to involve the IAEA in Iraq. The unresolved struggle

I know you meant it as a joke but:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/232514_msft arfa14.html

"'Pakistan's girl wonder (10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa)' is likely the youngest certified Microsoft expert"

The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. She says she plans to pursue a more advanced certification, as a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer

That's ok. I have a Democratic Governor who signed a bill passed by the GOP controlled Congress to allow slot machines at horse tracks because the tracks would have gone out of business in another decade or so.

Think I'm kidding? The bill specifically gives licenses to six horse tracks and one harness-racing track with an additional seven going to non-track sites. Read this article and take specific note of the last few paragraphs.

Ostensibly the revenue the state gets from the slots parlors will go towards reducing property taxes and more funding for schools but most estimates have shown the average reduction to be no more than $300, probably substantially less. However, there is/was a measure in the GOP-controlled Senate to increase the property tax reduction depending on how much we, the voters, agree to raise the earned income tax. See this article on how Republicans want to raise taxes on people.

Yeah, let's allow slots but not poker or blackjack because as everyone knows, gambling is evil.

Yeah, like Democrats don't push through more restrictive gambling laws. Be thankful that the federal law isn't as restrictive as the one for the State of Washington which bans posting on the Internet anything about "gambling information."