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As to charity, BG has NOT given money.

I don't know how true that *was*, but it is certainly not true as of july 21, 2004. From this article:
"Bill and Melinda Gates yesterday announced that all of an estimated $3 billion of the stock dividend that would have gone to the Microsoft chairman will instead be donated to their non-profit foundation in support of its efforts in global health, education and equity."

Pres Bush says no to a draft.
Kerry has proposed increasing the size of the military by 40,000.

Jimmy Swaggart may not be someone you personally follow, but he is certainly someone who has many followers.

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry," Swaggart said in the message. "And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."

And before we get off on how it's a "figurative expression" or a joke, this is a man whose job is to speak to inspire people. He doesn't build anything, he doesn't produce any goods, he makes his living by speaking and through his words inspire listeners to action. He is good at what he does. For him to say, "it's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything," is sort of like a professional race car driver getting pulled over for running a stop sign saying, "I'm not a good driver."

I'm not sure what your point is, if you have one. I wouldn't walk into a church or a mosque and say, "I spit upon your god," because that would be rude, and that's not how I feel. But if I did, why would the reaction in one house of worship be different than in another?

Maybe you've never met a Muslim or been to a Mosque, but they're not they're not crazied men riding through city streets on camels striking down women for showing some ankle. Yes, there is the fringe minority who think they are doing 'Allah's work.' But do not deny there is the same fringe in Christianity thinking murder is somehow 'God's work.'

Whta kind of political party would have a "policy" on same sex marriage,

The Republican kind. You know, like the one that dominates the USA government...

I think we should deny we have it, and then detonate something like it near south america. We should then have an impromptu parade in our honor.

Then after we make everyone think we blew it up, we claim that it is a smear campaign by south america.

(In case you missed it mods, that was making fun of North Korea)

Chris

Hot off the press: The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.

Another subject: An alcoholic told me that alcoholics use cocaine because that helps them drink more.

But now he's off for good.

Are you kidding me? ARE YOU JOKING?

Gates donates moeny to Africa [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/africa]

Gates donated 750 million. Almost a good billion dollars for Africa. Africa pwns Ohio anyday of the week when it comes down to needyness. You idiot.

Funny you mention "digital divide" when Gates himself does not believe in it.

Some current and former members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, privately, have viewed Kerry as a ruthlessly ambitious pol light on personal conviction ? a bit of a phony, in other words.
Kerry has always been an elusive figure, a complex man who rarely opens up to anyone outside a small circle of close advisers, family and friends.
One senior adviser once told me he loved working for Kerry because he would do anything ? whatever it took ? to win.

Too much is at stake to play by Dukakis' rules and lose again. That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.

Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up?

After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment.

What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?

Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard.

Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.

But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.

Read the grandparent again. He was not denying that the Chechnyan separatists were Islamic radicals. He was denying that the Chechnyan separatists are the same Islamic radicals that are fighting in Iraq.

There is nothing wrong with referring to the perpetrators of the Russian school attacks as "Chechnyan separatists," because that's what they are. They're also militant, because they use military-style tactics and training to prepare for and execute their attacks. So I don't see that the "liberal media" is doing us a disservice by using those terms.

Where in the "liberal media" have the attackers in Russia been referred to as "activists" or "freedom fighters?" Doing a quick survey of Google News, I find one story from today referring to them as "captors," one that makes no mention of the attackers (it focuses on the US plans for dealing with similar attacks), one that refers to them as raiders, and a Guardian article laced with words like "extremist", "terrorists", and "child-killers" (quoting Vladmir Putin). The last article also mentions that Chechnya has a Muslim majority, and mentions the possibility that some of the attackers were Arabs with links to al-Qaeda.

Yes, Islamic militants are a major source of terrorism, and to ignore this in dealing with Islamic terrorists is a bad idea. But many of the people and organizations who use violence to achieve political ends have nothing to do with Islam, and it would be a mistake to conflate terrorism with Islamic militants, or Islamic militants with Islam.

I for one am looking forward to November, when Kerry will be elected. I personally think that the hyperconfrontational posture Dubya is taking can only energize terror networks around the globe.

What we should be asking is why he would want to be able to zoom right in on a zebra's arse...

You're right; the image in the article should be captioned "scientist demonstrates zooming by enhancing zebra ass, finds fleas". Astounding! Quick, somebody get me $1000, I need a Sony HDTV or my perception of the world will crumble.

Gotta love how the nuclear storage containers at Hanford in Washington State still work today...

hanford leaks

And cleanup of the waste is not cheap...
cleanup

Bush would disagree. He has run up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt (trillions in the long term) claiming his tax cuts would add jobs. Hasn't happened (they claimed we'd be adding 300,000 a month at this point. Um, no.)

The president also thought he could save jobs by using steel tariffs and lumber tariffs (this from a "free trade" president). Didn't work. Bush flip-flopped and dropped the steel tariffs after nearly setting off a trade war.

Why bother with this when the folks in Washington let them through even though the metal detectors went off 3 FUCKING TIMES! Yes, 3 times the metal detectors went off and not once did the airport folks do their jobs and actually search the person and the baggage. For reference.

Also, Atta and one or two others were selected by CAPPS but had nothing overt done to them other than to hold their luggage to ensure they actually got on the plane. See the above link for the same information.

• Studies have shown that camera operators differentially target people who "look like misfits" (predominantly youth and minorities) and tend to ignore others so the cameras are themselves biased and like all biased searches can be fooled by those who appear "normal."
• The data compiled by these cameras is typically retained indefinitely with little or no control on how it is used. Britain has recently faced several court cases surrounding the use of such survaillence data by "its owners" (the people who put up the cameras) for commercial purposes.
• Worse yet a great deal of this data can be and is retained for "fishing expeditions." Not being a Brit I will not comment on UK laws but in the U.S. the FBI has recently recinded a long-standing (self imposed) ban on non-criminal investigations, that is, investigating groups and individuals who have not committed and are not expected to commit crimes. This ban was imposed in the wake of the COINTELPRO wherin the FBI conducted undercover survaillence on and, in some cases sought to disrupt groups such as the Students For a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King's SCLC.
  
  The Survaillence included sending forged letters from Dr King asserting that he was under investigation by the IRS in order to cut off SCLC funding. It also included attempts (sometimes successful) to prompt the firing of teachers (at the University and High-School level), attempts to prevent the distribution of legal books and phamplets, and attempts to distrupt anti-war marches.
  
  One choice quote from the committee is: "One technique used in COINTELPRO involved sending anonymous letters to spouses intended, in the words of one proposal, to 'produce ill-feeling and possibly a lasting distrust' "
  
  In short the FBI used its powers to destroy and discredit groups whose only crime was opposing the current state of affairs and advocating nonviolent means to change it.
  
  I know what you are going to say in response to this so let me anticipate it. Yes, the FBI's COINTEL programs relied on a great deal of legal violations. In carrying out many of these attacks the FBI simply violated the law in order to do what it did.
  
  But, the key point is that the entire operation rested on a massive survaillence effort. The kind of large-scale trawling operations that CCTV and increased electronic survaillence (the FBI used a great deal of warrentless electronic Survaillence for COINTELPRO see here) makes possible. So before you go and say that you trust the government to make us safer keep in mind that the government is a large body of people who have their own agendas and frequently (hell typically) misuse said data.
  
  Consider also the WWII internment of peaceful Japanese-American Citizens by the U.S. Most of these people had committed no crimes, particularly the children, it was the Census that made rounding them up possible (see here).
• As you yourself stated the cameras can only record what has happened. They do not prevent crimes unless one is afraid of them. Smart Criminal

they ordered about US$4.7e8 worth of Microsoft products for the next 6 years.

I'll give them credit for covering both options, though.

OTOH, it's possible they could have got a better deal waving around a credible FOSS initiative, like others have done recently.

• Most players are made in China.
• The Chinese government wants to reduce dependencies on foreign technology that requires royalties.
• With players selling for as little as $29.95, paying royalties to high-wage countries is no longer competitive.
• The top-grossing movie this week is Hero. It's from China.

Since when is it in the job description of the Police Department to help carry out statistical surveys for the local library? If the librarians want more statistics, they can simply log more traffic.

BTW, how do you propose keeping all users indoors may help with their statistics? Is it so the librarians can look them over and make notes like "suspicious-looking priest in black with glasses and TiBook" in their little statistical notebooks?

Encrypting wouldn't help much as they would have to give out the key anyway it being a public access point

Yeees. Go on. Keep thinking, you're on to something here. What if it ceases to be a public access point when you turn encryption on? Since the library already had an encrypted AP too, it seems to me this one was intentionally left public and open. Hell, he even had a library card so if they had encrypted the signal and made the AP available for known users only, he would most likely have had access to the key. It would be interesting to see the incident report.

BTW, he's not alone being questioned by police about his horrible crimes and terrorist activities.

Umm, this happens a lot. Usually only in smaller races, because in those races absentee ballots can represent a sizable percentage of the vote. Absentee ballots generally aren't very different from the 'in-person' vote distribution, as well, so it is very, very rare, but it does occur that it takes a week to finally determine the winner. See here, here, here, etc. All gleaned from a yahoo search for "absentee ballots change outcome of election".

Steve Jobs when asked what's next for the iPod:

"You know, our next big step is we want it to make toast," Jobs answered. "I want to brown my bagels when I'm listening to my music."

Damn Steve, again, he saw this charcoal technology coming before anybody. :)

But he wasn't critical of a certain Senator that's running for President named John Kerry that sat stunned for 45 MINUTES during the same scenario. Gee, I wonder who did better in that situation?

no-one gives a shit.

Actually hummer pruchases get you HUGE tax breaks. Basically it is a perversion of an old law to make it easier to buy farm equipment, it has now been applied to large SUVs. The tax break nearly pays for the Hummer. Pretty silly huh?

Why should companies want females with computer science degrees? Simple, they can do the work as well as anyone else, and you get to pay them 78% [SeattleTimes] of what a man will work for. Imagine the savings.

Check out the pic of the dummy head detached from its body from this article.

Poor, poor dummy.

Check out the pic of the dummy head detached from its body from this article.

Poor, poor dummy.

unless Gates was planning to do this with his 3 billion dollar share of the proceeds from said dividend.

Off-topic, but all $3 billion US of his dividend share will be going to his charity.

I'd rather bitch about the media on this one. I looked at the complete list from the other article, and I have to say it was pretty easy for them to go through the list pick out some crap and make it look horrible. For example, they mention "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971" well what about the other ones that were included 1965 - 1993. For a library that is a pretty good set.

Not that I like the RIAA, but really I don't think it is as bad as it looks from the articles.

Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm.

There is no way to sugar-coat this. You are 100% wrong. There is nothing factual about your claim. Perhaps you came to this conclusion based on inaccurate information, but you can no longer claim ignorance for your inaptness of the subject. Please read the facts regarding WMD if you have any questions. Your welcome.

Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?

Guess what? We never stopped our war with Iraq. According to the Safwan Accord signed by Iraq in 1991 to end the first Gulf War, Saddam was required to disclose his WMD programs and allow the UN to either destory the programs or view evidence that they were destroyed. This was a condition of the ceasefire to the first Gulf War. Well, Saddam never complied, so that means a ceasefire never took place. The conflict that started last year was a continuation of the war that started over a decade ago, and was only brought to pass because 9/11 shocked us into realizing that we couldn't leave serious business like that unfinished.

The only difference is this time we actually did finish the job, and we are safer because of it.

I'm also free to support the Communist party. I'm free to not go to any church and paint "God is Dead" on the side of my enviornmentally friendly import. And I'm free to burn the largest flag I can find provided I take the necessary precautions to ensure I don't light anything else on fire. So while you were sarcastic in your statement, I really don't know what he's talking about.

You sound like someone who goes spouting off without knowing the facts of the matter. According to the Seattle Times, Bobby's passport was revoked without his knowledge before its expiration date.

When you consider that the US government itself massively violated the UN sanctions by shipping arms to the Bosnian Muslim separatists, Fischer certainly seems to have a moral leg to stand on if not a legal one.

The most telling part of the article is the tagline at the end - "Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence," Anderson has written, "and is certainly not the most important one."

Read this article again, carefully. (I know the link is redundant in this thread, but scroll down the paragraphs 13 & 14...)

Can be found at this site.

Various sources point to the PS3 being in showable form before March here.

Take a look at this article in the Seattle Times. A guy was taking pictures in a public place for his course, and had 8 agents of the DHS come after him, guns drawn. They questioned him and found out he wasn't doing anything wrong, so they took his picture to profile him for their do not fly lists, etc, and told him to never go back to that public place (in violation of his constitutional rights).

That sounds like something a terrorist would say! Quick! Call John Ashcroft, this man is hiding something! What exactly would you do with this information you Amurrika hatin' terrorist you!

Actually though if you want to see how useless, stupid and ridiculous our "war on terrorism" has become (hope this one goes better than the "war on drugs" cuz last time I checked drugs were winning big time), check out the story of Ian Spiers. Here is the link to his website describing his run-in with Homeland Security types or you can read this story from the Seattle Times or this column from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. For those of you who don't want to read the articles Spiers was harrassed by the local police and Homeland Security types because he was taking pictures of the Ballard Locks, oh, and he's kind of not-white looking, but that never figures into the actions of our Homeland Security Overlords.

That sounds like something a terrorist would say! Quick! Call John Ashcroft, this man is hiding something! What exactly would you do with this information you Amurrika hatin' terrorist you!

Actually though if you want to see how useless, stupid and ridiculous our "war on terrorism" has become (hope this one goes better than the "war on drugs" cuz last time I checked drugs were winning big time), check out the story of Ian Spiers. Here is the link to his website describing his run-in with Homeland Security types or you can read this story from the Seattle Times or this column from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. For those of you who don't want to read the articles Spiers was harrassed by the local police and Homeland Security types because he was taking pictures of the Ballard Locks, oh, and he's kind of not-white looking, but that never figures into the actions of our Homeland Security Overlords.

1. Either it is miscounting the number of hits by OS's or
2. It is doing just fine, in which case I would say that it is American Teenagers, using the computers that thier folks bought them from Best Buy to slam the servers of google everytime the wind blows out the next "in" thing.

The free operating system makes up 2.7 percent of new desktop operating system licenses sold today, a figure expected to reach 6 percent by 2007, according to IDC figures. That will still leave Windows with 90 percent of the market.

Doubt it...he killed himself while out on bail by drinking antifreeze.

Anti-freeze isn't good for you...

My open letter to Steve Ballmer:

Dear Mr. Ballmer,

As a scientist and developer developer developer developer, I believe I can answer some of your concerns:

We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough [...]

I can sincerely assure you that I, for one, have never considered older (or newer, for that matter) versions of Microsoft Office and Windows good enough. Not even once. You can stop worrying about that.

On the need to innovate: The key to our growth is innovation. Microsoft was built on innovation, has thrived on innovation, and its future depends on innovation. [...] We lead in innovation in most areas where we compete, and where we do lag [...] rest assured that the race to innovate has just begun and we will pull ahead. [emphasis added]

Now, no matter how much you believe your developers developers developers developers to innovate innovate innovate innovate, saying the above as a company which, in fact, has never contributed a single notable innovation to any computer-related field... Well... What can I say? You are not only doomed. You are already dead.

Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.

On growth and costs: "We have as much opportunity to grow as any other company in the world. That's a big statement, but the opportunities we've scoped out are very big. Make no mistake -- we must grow our revenues to grow profits. We cannot just cut costs. At the same time, we must ensure a competitive cost structure, or competitors will offer prices, services or innovations that we cannot afford to match. Other companies have been severe in tightening costs the last few years -- layoffs, major benefit reductions, etc. We have not done those things and want to be prudent now so we avoid severe measures later."

On the need to innovate: "The key to our growth is innovation. Microsoft was built on innovation, has thrived on innovation, and its future depends on innovation. We are filing for over 2,000 patents a year for new technologies, and we see that number increasing. We lead in innovation in most areas where we compete, and where we do lag - like search and online music distribution - rest assured that the race to innovate has just begun and we will pull ahead."

On Microsoft's share price: "Obviously, we all want to increase the value of our stock, and we have the best opportunity to do that since the end of FY98. Our stock was around $25 then, as it is now, and we have more than doubled our operating profits since. Shareholders then were betting we would work hard for all these years to make the company worth that mid-98 stock price. We have done so."

On aiming products at various markets: "Our products must also be better segmented for different users with different needs. And we must evolve marketing to focus more squarely on the value proposition throughout the product lifecycle, not just at launch. So many customers have yet to deploy our most recent advances, so we must not only help them understand why to deploy, but also demonstrate the benefits of deploying before we reach the Longhorn generation."

On perceptions of Microsoft: "We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security. We must emphasize key positive perceptions of the strong manageability, and developer and information-worker preference, for our platform."

On avoiding the trappings of size: "Nothing solves 'big company' ills quite like a strong focus on accountability for results with customers and shareholders. Innovating, growing share and profits, and serving customers all ensure that we have no time for wasted motion. To do this, we need to prioritize the things that matter the most with our customers and for the company, and then be accountable for executing on those choices."

Possio was certainly first, but a company formed by ex-Monet Mobile (Burst) folks, including its founder, has a similar item in the U.S. called the Junxion Box. I wrote the first feature about it for The Seattle Times a few weeks ago. The Junxion Box can use 2G, 2.5G, and 3G cellular data networks. Junxion's technology allows interchangeable cell data PC cards from normal subscriptions -- its sort of generic hardware with simple drivers.

Some people have hobbies where they pretend to be falling for the scam, just to see what kind of wierd nonsense they can get the scammer to do. This site has some funny pictures...

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=303

More scammer-baiting can be found at http://www.419eater.com. And if you want more, just click on their links page - their are lots.

Please see below.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Secret Service confiscates anti-Bush drawings by 15-year-old at Prosser High

A few political sketches took a 15-year-old Prosser boy from his art class to questioning by the Secret Service -- and thrust him into a debate over free speech.

On Friday, the boy was questioned by the Secret Service after his art teacher turned in sketches by the boy featuring President Bush. In one, Bush's head was on a stake. In another, he was dressed as the devil, firing off rockets. The caption on one sketch read, "End the War -- on Terrorism." [Read More]

Please see below.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Secret Service confiscates anti-Bush drawings by 15-year-old at Prosser High

A few political sketches took a 15-year-old Prosser boy from his art class to questioning by the Secret Service -- and thrust him into a debate over free speech.

On Friday, the boy was questioned by the Secret Service after his art teacher turned in sketches by the boy featuring President Bush. In one, Bush's head was on a stake. In another, he was dressed as the devil, firing off rockets. The caption on one sketch read, "End the War -- on Terrorism." [Read More]

That's Moore's claim. However, his original version was that Disney killed the film because Jeb Bush would try to take away Disney's tax breaks on DisneyWorld in Florida... that's nice, but no such tax breaks exist for them to lose.

From the Seattle Times: For example, in Osceola County, Fla., Walt Disney World receives the farming break on 1,600 acres of pasture, timber and nurseries where it grows plants for its theme parks. The land, worth $194 million, is taxed as if it were worth $12.3 million, according to the county land records office. Disney spokeswoman Jacquee Polack said the company keeps a buffer of undeveloped land around the park, but she acknowledged some of this property will be developed.

But this probably wasn't what Moore was thinking about... :-)