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No, it's not. But when I see Fox News saying one thing (interestingly enough, these things don't tend to make it to their web-site, but are reserved for their "news" show), and dozens of other sources (including other conservative but honest sources) saying something else, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who's probably wrong, and why.

It's entirely possible that Carter is wrong in his attitude towards Israel. To conflate that with hating Jews, however, is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.

A 2001 evaluation of the bridge, prepared by the University of Minnesota, reported that there were preliminary signs of fatigue on the steel truss section under the roadway, but no cracking.

The report said there was no need for the Minnesota Transportation Department to replace the bridge because of fatigue cracking.

But a May 2006 report by the department noted that inspectors saw fatigue cracks and bending of girders along the span's approaches.

For more info, see today's Minneapolis Star Tribune article.

Bull!

Judd Bagley ran his website anonymously until he was outed by the media by the story in the New York Post that ran on Jan. 2, s007. http://www.nypost.com/seven/01022007/business/over stock_com_lashes_out_at_critics_on_web_business_ro ddy_boyd.htm

He put his name on the site a week later.

No wonder the SEC is investigating your butt. You lied about that too. It is in your filings that you and your company are both under SEC investigation for your running your company into the ground.

You have no credibility on any subject and nobody should believe a word that you say.

Judd, shouldn't you be at the office, preparing for your SEC deposition? "Writerjudd" aka "WordBomb" and several dozen other aliases, is Judd Bagley, Director of Communications at Overstock.com. Bagley trolls the web smearing critics of Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. Both Byrne and Overstock are under investigation by the feds for lying to the media. See here and here. and here.

Talk about giving everybody the worst possible guide of everyday British life...

That's ok, it's not like we American's don't have anything to be embarrassed about either ;)

Bricks and mortar Bank of America is not going to fuck over customers

Now THAT is funny.
Bank of America hit Gloria Carlo, 51, a single mom from the South Bronx, with a lawsuit demanding $23,312.04. It's money the bank claims she overdrew in a two-month home-shopping spending spree after already exhausting $38,000 from her own savings.

Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. are among the big banks notifying more than 670,000 customers that account information was stolen in what may the biggest security breach to hit the banking industry.

Users of the Bank of America's Visa Buxx prepaid debit cards are being warned that they may have had sensitive information compromised following the theft of an unencrypted laptop computer.

--
Simon

Yes, ditto on the suggestion to contest it with your card company. If you've already made a good-faith effort to settle it with XM, then contest the transaction every month and it should be reversed. Every chargeback costs $15 or so, it's quite a disincentive for trying to charge $10 or so on a monthly rate when it comes back as a $15 instead, and if there are too many chargebacks (I heard 1% chargebacks are not tolerated), the merchant account gets pulled. Once it's pulled, it's hard to convince a bank to give you a merchant account.

The XM merger will have a hard time going through on other accounts, The Sirius CEO got a very lucrative of a bonus, too lucrative for a company in trouble: here, and XM admitted that some 40% of their retransmission antennas were not located in their approved locations, heights or power ratings: here.

I have learned that past sky-high CO2 concentrations have been documented in peer-reviewed research journals. If we have hit peak oil, I doubt we will ever be able to reach these levels.

We find that CO2 emissions resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.

This data is available from a variety of sources, with interesting commentary:

We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place. When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis... And yet the super plumes did not last forever and they started to die at the end of Cretaceous.... In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28. And so this suggested to me that this was perhaps a significant reason for the first dinosaur extinction, and probably one of the major factors in the second, the terminal dinosaur extinction, other than the birds. It also neatly tied together all of the really bizarre features about the Cretaceous... The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have... Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity.

There is a great rejection of the global warming panic in the scientific community (it is unlikely that "big oil" funds have "bribed" so many faculty members of such prestigious universities, despite a smear campaign). Because of the tremendous expense of implementing Kyoto, should we pause in global warming remediation efforts that may border on the alarmist? It is not in any way difficult to find distinguished scientists who reject all calls for panic.

Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science of global warming... If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

Ah, did anyone doubt that the November Congressional elections would usher in a new era of pettiness and nonconstructive criticism about the war in Iraq? As the editorial notes, leading Democrats wasted no time in attacking the President's change in strategy before they had even heard the details, and as usual their mindless carping was not accompanied by alternate solutions.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01122007/postopinion/e ditorials/boxers_low_blow_editorials_.htm?page=0

Your math is good up until you assume that even a minor percentage of wii accidents are reported to one particular little-known website.

I agree with you, which I included the comment that this Wii problem website is not going to be a reliably accurate portrayal of the incident amounts. However, this site does go beyond a 'little-known' website. It's been mentioned in a Reuters news article which gets published to various news outlets such as yahoo, Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN Money, and the Washington Post not to mention the hordes of local newspapers, blogs, TV and Radio stations who reported on this topic and mentioned that website.

Suffice it to say, they're not 'little-known' when talking about the topic of Wii remote damages. However, I would believe that they don't have accurate data or methods to accurately report the data. Though, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it would have to be off by 400% to even reach 1%, which would be an amount at which I can start to see an actual product defect, rather than 'user defect', so to speak, hehe.

I'm sure there's a large margin of error on that math as it's just using basic estimates and takes in a lot of assumptions, but I think it does put this 'Wii remote damage' phenomenon into a better perspective of how it's more of a 'bizarre' news story than an actual consumer problem. It seems more like FUD than a creditable concern. I'd boldly state that not even Kevin Bacon can be connected to a case. =P hehe Of course, there's plenty of room for me to be wrong on this. =)

Cheers,
Fozzy

1. Deadly polonium traced to Russian nuclear plant
2. Plot Thickens as Spy Poison is Traced to a Nuke Plant in Putin's Russia

The second source suggests that the isotope composition is the signature that identifies a specific power plant. However, the Atomic Weapons Establishment declined to give the location of the plant.

I am sticking to my original guess of the culprit: a renegade group in Russia. Various reports have indicated that numerous factions, answering to no one, operate within the Russian government. One of these factions likely committed the crime.

Putin is just too smart to kill someone in such a blatant way. He would have known that such a gruesome murder would have serious negative consequences.

It starts at the top, and all the way down they are rotten

Whew! It's a good thing that the democrat's leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, is clean as a whistle . Not counting good old fashioned $90k-in-the-freezer bribe-taking by a congressional democrat, or president who hands out pardons in exchange for cashflow or sells access in exchange for illegal donations from China , it seems that high-end real estate transactions are a favorite pastime for the traditional representatives of the poor working slobs of the country. *cough Hillary*

Hey man easy with the stereotyping. There are plenty of brainy broads out there in pr0n. Like Thomas Pynchon's niece: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09282006/gossip/pagesi x/pagesix.htm (New York Post). Just because they're taking it in the dumper on film to make a living does not mean that they're all meth head junkies. Some are oversexed coeds from ultra liberal arts colleges who view the money as just an added bonus for what they would be doing in their spare time anyway. When I used to write for the Cornell Daily Sun I couldn't even bring it home to show my parents because the sex columnist would be writing about how she her bum was violated by a Naval Officer on shore leave. Seriously. Then again I don't know anyone who would pay to see her in a state of undress.

As it happens, providing misleading data is exactly what Al Queda recommends, so maybe we all need to start behaving like terrorists now?

You'll have to find your own link to Al Queda's guide, because I don't want to risk police action here in the UK, where "a person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism" - Terrorism Act 2000. But here's an extract.

If you look at the top 500 companies in America, you'll find they share the same 1000 people as board members. The super rich get around. If you own 10% of a company, you're probably going to want to try for a board spot, so you have some say beyond just voting shares. Thus, the billionaires all run each other's companies to a certain extent. Talk about anti-trust, you'll see eventually this being exposed. Then they'll look back at the records the SEC keeps, and the state regulators and they'll find all sorts of "coincidences" that allowed these 1000 people to basically take control of 98% of the wealth in America. They control thru their influence the jobs market, the manufacturers, stock prices, etc. If they were to all get together, say in Idaho, and consort with one another on long-term goals, they could really shift the direction of the world. Not unlike the lords and dukes of earlier times.

It shouldn't be all that surprising that two major innovators in computing share a few billionaire board members, that's all.

Yes, it is. Because it once again brings into focus how the internet tends to fuel the psychoses of paranoid schizophrenics worldwide. These people need help, but instead the internet just helps them descend further into madness. It's 9/11, it's chemtrails, it's Morgellons, and above all it's depressing to watch.

August 3, 2006 -- More than one-third of Americans suspect federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new poll.

The survey also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.

I live in the Phoenix area. and I know of one datacenter, actually two, that have four feeds each. Yeah, one at each corner. The design is intended to guarantee that failure of two fo the four feeds requires events that span over 1000 feet at the site, and rapidly increase the span of the event to tens of miles. And multiple sources, such as nuclear, hydro, and fueled generators. And one of these facilities isn't even in use. It was 60% finished when the money ran out in the 90s. Sold now, it will be lit in a little while.

Of course, power is a problem. Ask the folks in Queens http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/disaster_a rea_regionalnews_stefanie_cohen__stephanie_gaskell _and_hasani_gittens.htm .. And that's a good chunk of municipal grid.

It was mentioned on Slashdot last May that rumors were circulating about Microsoft acquiring Ebay:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/27/065023 1&from=rss

The New York Post wrote:

"May 26, 2006 -- For several weeks Microsoft has been in discussions about a possible acquisition of online auctioneer eBay, The Post has learned.
According to multiple sources close to the matter, Microsoft has considered buying eBay and merging it with its MSN portal - a deal that would give MSN and eBay considerable clout to take on Google. "

http://www.nypost.com/business/64226.htm

There must surely be more to this move threat of eBay's than meets the eye. On the simple face of things I think eBay refusing Google payments would be like eBay cutting off its nose to spite its face. Google is the "golden child" of the moment and has tremendous clout and cache. EBay is brimming with fraud and losing many of its best sellers to Amazon. Customers who get ripped of by bogus sellers get little help from eBay or PayPal and there is an increasing resentment against them. EBay to refusing Google payments would just paint it even more into a corner. Seeing eBay's threat against a Microsoft merger would make more sense - even if its still a bad idea.

What is this, Digg? Link to the story, not some fuckhead's blog: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/back_to_the_fu turama_entertainment_don_kaplan.htm

Revver has been doing this for some time already - just with much less intrusive ads. That diet coke and mentos experiment linked on Slashdot was using Revver and made over $20,000 for the creators in two weeks (according to various news reports).

Revver splits the ad revenue 50-50 with creators - or if there is a syndicator involved 20%(syndicator) - 40% (creator) - 40% (Revver).

Me too, especially reading about this recent incident in New York involving a crazed cabbie. I never did like cabs. It's much easier, cheaper, and healthier to walk 25 blocks, even in the middle of winter.

I submitted a story on this yesterday morning. Vonage went on CNBC Wednesday morning and announced that it "is going to let some of its customers off the hook by buying their unwanted shares." The statement said that "While all avenues are available to us we cannot imagine alienating our customers in that way. If certain . . . customers don't pay we expect to repurchase shares from the underwriters if necessary."

People immediately started pointing out that it is illegal for a compnay to treat different shareholders in the same class differently -- Vonage was only offering to "make whole" (Wall Street speak for "absorb the losses of") investors that hadn't yet paid for their shares; people that had paid were SOL.

The whole IPO has basically been a mess, with snafus both in selling shares to their customers and delivering them. Some Vonage customers that they were led to believe that they "weren't allocated shares in the IPO when in fact they had received the shares. Others investors who purchased shares have complained that technical glitches on a Web site set up for Vonage customers prevented them from executing sales in a timely fashion."

I've had good experiences with the Vonage product as a customer, but there are many, many stories of how poorly Vonage customer service treats their customers. They're very slow in sorting out problems -- it took them 3 months to transfer my land-line phone number, and initially the temporary number they gave me was in a different area code than my city, putting me in a long-distance calling zone relative to my friends. It took hours before they fixed it (they kept claiming it wasn't "technically possible" to give me a new number). Analysts are worried that future propects for the company might not look so good, and that screwing over their own customers in the IPO might be the last straw.

But that's what's so bizarre about it; people most emphatically say "no," and yet Hollyweird keeps pursuing the same damned agenda with a dogged determination that can only be described as religious [or, more accurately, as pagan]:

ABC NOW FEARING A MASS TUNEOUT
By DON KAPLAN
February 1, 2006

Brokeback Mountain" and a slew of other arty, less-widely seen Oscar-nominated flicks are expected to take the polish off ABC's ratings for the Academy Awards this year.

With no big-budget films like "Titanic," "Gladiator" or "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" in this season's crop of nominees, ABC may be staring down the barrel of one of the lowest-rated Oscar telecasts in recent memory when it airs on March 5, say TV-industry analysts.

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/62698.htm

I suspect in this case the word "radical" means anybody who is not toeing the republican line 100%.

Curbed.com has a photo tour of Google's new office in Chelsea (15th at 8th), for which they just signed the lease a few days ago. At 311,000 square feet, it's over three times the size of their previous midtown space.

The floor's not much to look at now, but I'm looking forward to seeing it fully decked out when they throw a party someday (keeping my fingers crossed!) I'll invite y'all.

Instead of linking to three stories all citing the NY Post, why not link right to them?

http://www.nypost.com/business/28069.htm

Better yet, here's the text, so you needn't be bothered with registration:

AOL'S TIME IS UP

By TIM ARANGO

September 15, 2005 -- In a deal that would unite two of America's corporate giants as partners in the Internet business, Time Warner is in advanced discussions to sell a stake in America Online to Microsoft, The Post has learned.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Time Warner is in talks with Microsoft about selling the stake in AOL and then combining it with Microsoft's Web unit MSN.

Under the plan being considered, Microsoft would pay some money to Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture.

While the deal could fall apart, the companies are hopeful they can wrap it up within the next couple of months.

Talks are most advanced with Microsoft -- Time Warner management's preferred partner -- but the media giant has also had discussions with both Yahoo! and Google over a sale or venture with AOL, according to a source close to Time Warner.

Time Warner's inclination to partner with a large tech company suggests that even if AOL's most recent strategy of becoming a free portal is successful, it may not be enough to keep the unit within the Time Warner fold.

While AOL began testing the portal in June and has won plaudits for the quality of its videos and other features, the company has yet to make a big marketing push, even though it promised one by the end of August, noted Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum.

Greenfield, who said it's too early to judge whether the portal strategy is a success, believes Time Warner should wait before making a decision on the future of AOL.

"I think it's too early for it to be sold or spun out," he said.

AOL has seen the number of subscribers decline from 26 million in 2003 to fewer than 22 million now, as users fled AOL's dial-up service for broadband.

Its portal strategy -- a reversal of its prior focus of offering exclusive content -- puts AOL in direct competition with Yahoo!, MSN and Google.

The AOL discussions come as Time Warner management has been reviewing numerous strategic moves to boost the company's share price.

And as other media companies such as Viacom work out plans to break apart after years of consolidation, Time Warner is likely to be a starkly different company a year from now.

In addition to a likely AOL move, some or all of the company's cable unit will finally be spun off early next year.

Beyond that, sources close to Time Warner's management say that Time Inc., the company's publishing unit, could be sold or spun off sometime next year if its performance doesn't improve.

In addition to the strategic moves, Time Warner's Don Logan, who shares the No. 2 executive duties at the company with Jeff Bewkes, is expected to retire in 2006.

Since the disastrous merger between Time Warner and AOL in 2000, about $200 billion in shareholder value has been wiped out.

Until this year, company management had been hamstrung by fraud investigations by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, but those probes were settled for $510 million. Time Warner's Chairman Dick Parsons later put aside some $2 billion to settle shareholder litigation.

Meanwhile, the company has been targeted by corporate raider-turned-shareholder-activist Carl Icahn, whose group has been amassing a stake in Time Warner and pushing for seats on the board of directors.

AOL'S TIME IS UP By TIM ARANGO In a deal that would unite two of America's corporate giants as partners in the Internet business, Time Warner is in advanced discussions to sell a stake in America Online to Microsoft, The Post has learned. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Time Warner is in talks with Microsoft about selling the stake in AOL and then combining it with Microsoft's Web unit MSN. Under the plan being considered, Microsoft would pay some money to Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture. While the deal could fall apart, the companies are hopeful they can wrap it up within the next couple of months. Talks are most advanced with Microsoft -- Time Warner management's preferred partner -- but the media giant has also had discussions with both Yahoo! and Google over a sale or venture with AOL, according to a source close to Time Warner. Time Warner's inclination to partner with a large tech company suggests that even if AOL's most recent strategy of becoming a free portal is successful, it may not be enough to keep the unit within the Time Warner fold. While AOL began testing the portal in June and has won plaudits for the quality of its videos and other features, the company has yet to make a big marketing push, even though it promised one by the end of August, noted Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum. Greenfield, who said it's too early to judge whether the portal strategy is a success, believes Time Warner should wait before making a decision on the future of AOL. "I think it's too early for it to be sold or spun out," he said. AOL has seen the number of subscribers decline from 26 million in 2003 to fewer than 22 million now, as users fled AOL's dial-up service for broadband. Its portal strategy -- a reversal of its prior focus of offering exclusive content -- puts AOL in direct competition with Yahoo!, MSN and Google. The AOL discussions come as Time Warner management has been reviewing numerous strategic moves to boost the company's share price. And as other media companies such as Viacom work out plans to break apart after years of consolidation, Time Warner is likely to be a starkly different company a year from now. In addition to a likely AOL move, some or all of the company's cable unit will finally be spun off early next year. Beyond that, sources close to Time Warner's management say that Time Inc., the company's publishing unit, could be sold or spun off sometime next year if its performance doesn't improve. In addition to the strategic moves, Time Warner's Don Logan, who shares the No. 2 executive duties at the company with Jeff Bewkes, is expected to retire in 2006. Since the disastrous merger between Time Warner and AOL in 2000, about $200 billion in shareholder value has been wiped out. Until this year, company management had been hamstrung by fraud investigations by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, but those probes were settled for $510 million. Time Warner's Chairman Dick Parsons later put aside some $2 billion to settle shareholder litigation. Meanwhile, the company has been targeted by corporate raider-turned-shareholder-activist Carl Icahn, whose group has been amassing a stake in Time Warner and pushing for seats on the board of directors. http://www.nypost.com/business/28069.htm

With any luck the "Offtopic" mod will get his next load of crack from Osama bin Laden.

THE LAST STAR WARS
It opens next week. I saw it, and here's the thing: It's unbelievably bad. O I'm telling you this because movie critics won't. So far all the early reviews -- all of them, from Variety to the Hollywood Reporter to Time magazine -- have been favorable. Why? Because while the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today's critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience's bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord. Since it's a foregone conclusion that the final Star Wars is going to make a jillion dollars, the safe thing for critics to do is say nice things about it. The only nice thing I can think to say about it is that it's not quite as mindspinningly wretched as its predecessor, Attack of the Clones, but it's plenty awful anyway. Even Yoda gives a rotten performance. Go see it if you must when it opens next week, but at least you got one fair warning here.
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp ?ref=/thecorner/05_05_08_corner-archive.asp#062506

JAR JAR BINKS
[JAR JAR BINKS SPOILER]
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp ?ref=/thecorner/05_05_08_corner-archive.asp#062515

Star Wars VI
THE FINAL Star Wars is, as writer-director George Lucas promised, a tragedy--but it's not the tragedy Lucas thinks it is. Ever since he began making his second set of Star Wars movies a decade ago, Lucas said that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would be the unvarnished story of the young knight Anakin Skywalker's degeneration and conversion into the black-helmeted, black-outfitted Darth Vader, the villain of the first three films. The tale of woe it really tells is that of George Lucas himself, the final chapter in the sad degeneration of a vital, vivid, and highly amusing moviemaker into a dull, solipsistic, and humorless incompetent. Lucas had more than a quarter of a century to figure out why Anakin Skywalker went bad. And here's what he came up with: [SPOILERS FOLLOW]
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/ 000/000/005/611ajqxt.asp

"HOLD ME, ANNAKIN! HOLD ME AS YOU DID BY THE LAKE ON NABOO!"
Just a little taste of what Cornerites are in for if they go to see Star Wars at midnight. Enjoy.....suckers.....
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp ?ref=/thecorner/05_05_15_corner-archive.asp#063403

Jason Appuzo [Liberty Film Festival] objected to the needless insertion of politics:

[LOTS OF SPOILERS]
This is in large part what irritates me about Lucas' recent remarks. He's actually created a good storyline here, and he's publicly clouding it with nonsense about Bush and the current war. Politics has nothing to do with Anakin's turn to the Dark Side. Revenge of the Sith takes a largely dismissive view of politics, and of movements (whether Jedi or Sith) that assert deep insight into human relations. This is why Vader's late utterances about "his Empire" - a clear dig at Bush - ring so phony, so out of place. Politics are not what have been motivating Anakin for the previous 2+ hours - then, out of nowhere, he starts speechifying like an adolescent Napoleon.

Article

It didn't die because it didn't have PVR. It's death could partly be blamed for the internal family conflict between the Dolans.

"Earlier this year Chuck Dolan lost a boardroom battle with his son, CEO Jimmy Dolan, that resulted in the company cutting off funding for Voom. "

and

"In 2004 Voom lost $661.4 million on paltry revenues of $14.9 million, including $354.9 million in write-downs."

In other related news. Cablevision, who own Voom, said yesterday that Voom would be shutdown at the end of this month. Good timing.

The oil "crisis" is a SCAM

http://www.nypost.com/business/22624.htm

Fact 1: The inventory of crude oil in the U.S. right now is 8 percent larger than it was this same week last year. And that's the biggest amount of crude on hand since the middle of 2002.

Fact 2: That the 8 percent increase doesn't include all the oil purchased by Washington and put into the emergency Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which now has 685 million barrels. That's up from 650 million barrels last year and 599 million in '03.

Fact 3: There is 7.5 percent more gasoline in stock right now in this country than during the same week last year. And you'd have to go back to this same week in 1999 to find more gasoline inventory -- when the average price at the pump was only $1.01 a gallon.

Fact 4: Including everything made of oil, there is 4.9 percent more supply this year than when Spring began in 2004. And there's about 10 percent more of all petroleum products in stock today than when the Iraqi war began.

And, finally, Fact 5: American consumers are being conned by speculators -- and a media that doesn't ask enough tough questions -- into thinking there is some sort of supply problem.

Now here's my No.1 Prediction: If the greedy bottom-feeders who are causing prices to rise end up being responsible for damaging the U.S. economy there will be as much hell to pay on Wall Street as there was when the stock market bubble destroyed people's dreams.

Crude oil prices were down nearly $4 a barrel over the past two days because the goon speculators are starting to lose their grip on the market.

Yeah, let's celebrate the spurious frittering away of wealth by the rich! Hooray for Mr. Branson for funding a school-boy dream project that will help his recently announced space-tourism company. Hooray for Steve Forbes for his ridiculous megalomaniacal presidential runs. ( I mean, who hasn't wanted to be president?) And Kudos to The Trump for walking away from bankruptcy with a cool $2 million a year at the expense of investors. Paris Hilton take note - you are a star every time you drop an absurd amount on... well whatever Paris Hilton spends her money on.

Really, all these folks are much better than those dull philanthropic types like Oprah , Bill Gates href=http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm>Bi ll Gates and George Soros. What fun is there in championing human kidness and decency, public health and global economic fairness?

This world is full of people looking to satisfy their own ego-centric desires. Some have the moolah to fulfill the big ones, and some of them are more fun, but it is merely a question of scale. Branson is little better than the tight-fisted Krocs or Waltons. The really amazing people are the ones who use their wealth to do something to raise up their fellow humans.

Everyone is biased.

Encarta is edited by professional editors, and as such it has a standard of integrity which Microsoft's customers expect.

Wikipedia is edited by bored Internet users, and as such it bears a disclaimer that it is "for entertainment purposes only."

I would much sooner trust Encarta than Wikipedia for encyclopedic knowledge, in much the same way that I'd trust any other journalistic source than a bunch of bored Internet users to edit my news.

The last article about Google browser speculation is here.

Nope. Courts have sided against the "Free Speach Means I Get To Do Whatever I Want" argument in the past, with no sign of it changing. The fact that you are unfamiliar with the issues doesn't change this fact.

Faxes have had laws against fax spam for awhile. Those have been challeneged in court, and the laws stand. Telemarketing used to be a minor annoyance, and it grew and grew until we ended up with the Do Not Call list. Tele-spammers have tried to argue "Free Speech" in regards to that law, and again they have lost. You would never argue that I had a right to advertise by painting my ad on your car or house without permission, so why would you believe that spammers forcing their unwanted crap onto millions of other peoples computers to be acceptable?

A couple of quotes from judges :

U.S. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:
"[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands."

Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court:
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every persons domain."

So much for the free speech nonsense.

I sincerely doubt that the companies that employ spammmers, especially porn spammers, make enough money to make it worth their while to buy a congressman.

Porn is one of the most profitable online businesses. (Offline, too. Sex sells.) Porn showed other companies *how* to use the web to make money. Even so, the porn spammers were obviously not the ones that managed to get the CAN-SPAM law passed, or there would not be additional restrictions for porn spam. And they aren't all small timers. For instance, Columbia House (you know - the "Get 10 albums for 10 cents!" people) has recently created a porn division.

The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote CAN-SPAM. It has very, very large businesses as members. Visit the link. You'll notice that the top section of the page is nothing but search engine keyword spam.

From their page, some of their members :
The DMA membership roster includes companies like AT&T, IBM, AOL Time Warner, Mellon Bank, Microsoft, Home Shopping Network, The New York Times, Rapp Collins, Prudential Insurance, Phillip Morris, Proctor & Gamble, as well as R.R. Donnelley, Acxiom, Experian and DoubleClick.

Now, do you want to stick with your "they can't afford to lobby congress" story? The DMA didn't want spam to be banned, so they managed to get a law past that let congresscritters say "Look, we passed a law against spam!" while actually passing a law that just formalised how to spam legally.

You might want to loosen your tinfoil hat some.

You might want to educate yourself about the issues instead of talking trash just because you don't understand.

Perhaps they are chasing the wackiest consumer warning label award for 2005. Story

They've found some guy who was playing with his laser pointer and they're going to fry him. Doesn't matter whether he was the one they were looking for, doesn't matter whether the guy they were looking for could have done any harm this way if he'd been trying

The article says:

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/37694.htm

David Banach, 38, of Parsippany, admitted under questioning that he aimed the hand-held laser beam at the jet and later a helicopter, but did not intend to do any harm, authorities said.

The jet was flying at 3,000 feet with six passengers aboard and was about 11 miles away from the airport. The flash temporarily blinded the pilots, but they were able to safely land the plane.

Banach even warned agents not to point the laser into anyone's eyes because it could hurt them, court papers said.

> make sure that when national guardsmen come home from Iraq, trained in urban warfare and all pissed off at having been abused by the government

Actually, a majority of soldiers in Iraq have a positive view of the war, and 87% report job satisfaction.

Related news story.

Why does /. even allow links to sites like the NY Times which require PITA registration? A moments search on Google or Google News almost always turns up unrestricted options. Try the NY Post for this story.

Too bad for you. Those who can find the Apple Store in NYC can apparently get a hot date.

Public records show that unauthorized tampering has already
occurred with these computers -- during an election. In a primary
election in King County, Washington, held during September 2004, there
are 3 hours, from 9:52 p.m. until 1:31 a.m., missing from the record
kept in the "central tabulator audit log". The organization "Black
box voting" ( http://www.blackboxvoting.org ) discovered this after
obtaining the "audit log" through a public records request. "Black
box voting" explains

>> The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to
>> the "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access
>> to the Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go
>> into it in the clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in
>> Washington DC at the National Press club.)
>>
>> The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security
>> feature. The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you
>> might see if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote
>> file, previewing and/or printing interim results, altering
>> candidate definitions (a method that can be used to flip votes).

In addition, they ("Black box voting") KNOW there should be some
information for that time frame. They were there, at the scene in
King County, and obtained "summary reports" of the ongoing vote
tabulation that are time-stamped during the 9:52 p.m. to 1:31 a.m.
These "summary reports" are automatically generated and stored in the
audit log, and there is no explanation as to why they are now absent.

You can read more about the King County, Washington situation at
http://www.blackboxvoting.org#breaking . There are images posted of
the corrupted central tabulator audit log
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/auditlog.PDF and the "summary reports"
that are missing http://www.blackboxvoting.org/resultspages.PDF .
(The first doesn't open for me, somebody should email them and let
them know this link seems to be broken ... at least for me).

What was removed from the "central tabulator audit log" besides these
summary reports? Evidence of vote-tampering? Nobody knows.

Less well-documented but potentially more frightening was the apparent
manipulation of computer voting machine results during the Wisconsin
Democratic primary. Martin Bento did a comparison between results
obtained in precincts not using the new computers and those that do,
and discovered striking discrepancies:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/e xplodedview/1389 .html?view=1901 .

Finally, there were some very fishy things going on with the exit poll data. Dick Morrison is certainly an expert at using polls to predict political outcomes, as you will know if you are familiar with his political work for Clinton, etc. . Morris thinks the discrepancies were so inexplicable that there should be an investigation, and has written a New York Post piece titled "EXIT-POLL OUTRAGE" http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/3 1590.htm. Morris tends to work on the Republican side these days -- he assumes it must have been the exit polls that were at fault.

But given the degree of uncertainty surrounding e-voting I think there should be a call for an investigation of possible vote fraud. As the following blogger notes,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/04741/7055

>> What is puzzling everyone at the moment is the
>> discrepancy between the exit polls and the
>> votes that are being reported. The way the
>> pundits are framing this issue is: what went
>> wrong with the exit polls?
>>
>

Kerry lost largely on high voter turnout for those who opposed him on moral grounds, especially gay marriage.

Which is strange, considering that Kerry was and is against legalizing gay marriage. Ah, hey, were you one of those Republican trolls who stood outside Democratic precinct polling places, falsely claiming Kerry wanted to legalize gay marriage?

Republicans taught us more ways to lie and cheat this past election season.

yes yes...and then bin ladens supposed threat to the red states lines up well with John Titor's explanation of who the coming civil war will be fought between...

Oh Oh! he also said it would become apparent with the civil unrest near the 2004 election!

but i do not see anything of that sort...not in today's America.

If youre refering to this article in the NYY post, then FYI.

That Yigal Carmon whos quoted in the article is kinda mossad guy and a known advocat of torture and the occupation of palestine. Maybe one of the most rightwing ones you can find. Notorious is his analysis of the madrid bombing (heres an interview on the topic hosted on the site of his MEMRI institute) in an attempt to side Aznar`s lies. Why the House chose him to report on arab media is up to your own guesses. German researcher Henner Kirchner hosts an article on his background, sorry its german.

Note: if a headline calls a human (whomever) a monster make sure to check the background of 'experts' quoted.

Don't ask me but Bush must be doing something right to have Bin Laden running like a scared little girl. http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/33124.htm

Because road safty is in the hands of the person. It is my choice to go 100 mph down the road and create an accident of 50 or so cars in rush hour. It is another thing to be going about your business and have your air plane jacked and ramed into a building where the common man is working. Same with alcohol poisening, drug abuse, somewhat homocides/murder (but that goes along with terrorists in a parallel sort of way), firearm accidents, drowing, accidental fire, suicides.

I really don't beleive that you just compared something that nobody had control over, such as a terorrist act, to a suicide where it only hurts one person that is them self. A suicide doesn't kill innnocent people.

Your ethics are really off and it really shows that you don't understand what is going on in todays world. And if this is the case of the things you listed up above why do liberals make a big thing about 1000 people getting killed in war, because it is obvious 3000 people killed in a terrorist act in a span of an hour isn't important so why would 1000 people matter to you.

It is obvious you would rather have a president tell you he can correct something he has no power over such as traffic accidents, alcohol poisening, drug abuse, suicides, and etc, than something he has power to help protect the US (and the World) in the future from EVIL vendictive people.

Bin Laden is trying to scare the American people to vote for somebody that won't hunt down and kill his Army of Sucicidal Morons. He is running scared and this NY Post Article proves it by his endorcment for John Kerry, and Bin Laden quoting Michael More, about something nobody knew of before he put it in the movie. (the my pet goat, the book was not known until the movie, or at least I never heard about it.)

I totally agree with you but he probably thinks we are as weak minded as Spain was when their publics support shifted twords the socialist canidate after the bombing in Madrid. Just take a look at the website and tell me what you think it means http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/33124.htm

Point me to where he says he is going to do anything on his website. With an exact plan. I can't find anything and I dare you too.

Also just a general note to everybody stop quoting CNN they are about as reliable as 60 mins now a days. Take a look at the NY Post http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/33124.htm