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"...global warming could actually benefit humanity by expanding the amount of arable land..." Bullshit. Change is bad, any change is bad. One theory is that our temperature has remained artifically stable for the last 10K years because of the gulf stream being shut off as we increased temp. One theory in anthropology is that the only reason we developed a society at all was because of this stability. Why fuck with a known quantity. risk=damagexlikelyhood again. Damage is totally unknown so why risk it?

Even if you kill all the dumb people 50% of the remaining people will still be dumb, statistics are a bitch. I am obviously being absurdest but my point is still valid. If the conservatives think we can preemptively strike Iraq (killing hundreds of thousands of people) to prevent them from attacking us (when there was no way in hell that they would) why can't I kill the people who are risking the only known habitable planet in the universe so they can what??? Not modify their lazy, arrogant, slothful, greedy, murderous lifestyle? What exactly is so important that you are fighting for? Inefficiency. A noble purpose if ever there was one.

Birth rates. Condoms and educating women the only two things that drop it. But you are not taking into account that the Muslims, the Christians, the Hindus, and a lot of other people who KNOW they are right, and think they have a G-d given right to have as many kids as possible hell some think it is an imperative. Religion trumps thinking a frightening proportion of the time. Are you willing to RISK it once again. Any population growth at all will lead to doubling. Per Dr. Albert A. Bartlett at University of Colorado, Boulder...
"The land area of the continents (excluding Antarctica) is 1.24 1014 m2. If this modest annual growth rate of 1.7% were to continue steadily in the future, how long will it take for the population to reach a density of one person per square meter on the continents? Solving, we find t is slightly less than 600 years."

600 fucking years; a little less than half the time since Mohammed, 1/3 of the time since Jesus and it will be one person per square meter. Wake up jackass.

As to Al Gore and propaganda lets look at this critically. You are telling me that scientists, a group of squabbling intellectuals who's only hope of advancement is one-upmanship have conspired to take away our freedom to burn fossil fuels for what? So they can control us? So they can make us suffer? Because they are all secretly communists? Vs. the idea the the MOST PROFITABLE business in human history has to introduce just enough fear uncertainty and doubt to make sheeple like you question the questioners. Oh yes those billions of dollars the ivory tower egg heads have hidden away with their magic lead to gold machines are being used to push a propaganda machine of biblical proportions drowning out the logical dispassionate arguments of the capitalist captains of the oil industry. Follow the money... fuck you you ignorant ass. How much did Exxon make this year? That's the fucking money. "Show me the money" Oh wait here's the money...
"Exxon earned $45.2 billion in 2008, beating the record it set in 2007 for most profitable corporation, at $40.6 billion. That came despite a fourth "quarter in which income fell 33 percent, owing to the steepest drop ever in oil prices, as the economy went into a tailspin." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/business/31oil.html

"hy did the coldest period in the last half billion years have 10 times, that's 1000% the CO2 level we have today if CO2 is such a big driver for temperature increase? There's your bullshit." um... citation?

How about this one http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/
So what if it is "relatively cold" right now. This temperature range works for us. Don't RISK fucking it up bec

What are you smoking? The US hasn't even threatened to "wipe Iran off the map".

Clinton on an Iran Attack: 'Obliterate Them'

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Yes, this may have been lip service to Israel as Hillary Clinton was running for President at the time, but she is now Secretary of State, and those are dangerous words that she never backed off of.

Nor has Israel actually.

Using Bombs to Stave Off War

"Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best - meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel's own nuclear arsenal."

This was an op-ed by Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, to the N.Y. Times about doing a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran. His op-ed was met with tepid reaction by the media and no real denials from the Israeli side. One op-ed by an Israeli historian doesn't reflect what the Israeli government thinks, but their total silence on the matter is somewhat disturbing.

Keep in mind, U.S. aggression against Iran started in the 1950's with Operation Ajax, when a CIA backed mission overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister and installed a dictator. With that history in mind and the recent U.S. war against Iraq, I don't blame Iran for wanting its own space program.

Well then I guess we should have kept those unpaid laborers in the South. After all, they didn't "lose" anything when they picked cotton all day.

They lost the cotton. The difference between tangible property and information is that if someone else takes your tangible property then you don't have it any more, and if someone takes information then both of you have it.

Put another way: only one person can use a boll of cotton. An unlimited number of people can use an idea. Someone else using my idea does not preclude me also using it; Microsoft publishing a book I wrote does not preclude my also publishing it. It may make it impractical for me to profit from the book I wrote, but that falls under the category of "unfair competition," not "taking away a piece of property that I own." It's wrong, and it's also fundamentally different from stealing.

The language of copyright holders - "own an idea," "intellectual property," "stolen ideas," "piracy," is calculated to make the public forget the fundamental differences between ideas and objects, and support laws and policies that equate intellectual property with physical property. This is to the benefit of copyright (and patent) holders, who can then rely on the government to bear the cost of enforcing their copyrights, among other benefits.

The preponderance of people who claim that we have a "right" to "own" and profit from ideas shows how well this brainwashing is working. Apparently it goes so far as to make some think that a company can "steal" profits that haven't even been earned yet. The reality of intellectual property cases is quite different; see Polaroid v. Kodak.

It's unclear these days where erectus begins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/science/20fossil.htm

The Dmanisi specimens were quite different. Their skull sizes indicated that their brains were not much larger than the brain of a chimpanzee. Their brains were closer in size to those of Homo habilis, a poorly understood earlier ancestral species.

In the last few years, however, the researchers collected more extensive, well-preserved skeletal remains of an adolescent and three adults. Some of the fossils resembled those of later erectus specimens in Africa. The lower limbs and arched feet reflected traits "for improved terrestrial locomotor performance," the team reported.

Over all, the fossils were "a surprising mosaic" of primitive and evolved features. The small body and small craniums, the upper limbs, elbows and shoulders were more like the earliest habilis specimens.

The contempt for the foreigners coming here on H1-B visas, and the companies that hire them, disgusts me. What makes you any better or more deserving than these people? The fact that you were born in the US? Please.

Hate to bust your frail grasp of reality, but US citizens aren't the only people in the world who have a strong sense of nationalism and are opposed to US companies hiring foreign labor to replace domestic labor. The Brits apparently have the same sense of nationalism..

So why don't you can your anti-American bullshit now that you've been called out?

You can find historic examples of how to handle a financial like this one. In the early 90-ies Sweden experience a housing bubble similar to what has happened in the US. The state bailed out the banks, but unlike the US the state also took control over the banks. Here is NYT article about it. As a result the Swedish economy bounced back and most, if not all, of the money used to rescue the banks have been returned to the taxpayers. This was done by a right-wing government. This is in contrast to Japan where the Japanese government did nearly nothing in similar situation a few years before. Japans is still suffering the consequences of the resulting recession.

I play a little guitar. I'm certainly no Hendrix or Santana, but I can play. It didn't take years and years of hard, painful practice either (well, hence why I'm neither Hendrix nor Santana, both of them did actually do just that, besides having exceptional talent, IMO), I just played and, over time, I got better.

Exceptional talent may not be that important. "Many accounts of the development of expertise emphasise that it comes about through long periods of deliberate practice. In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours deliberate practice are common. Typically recent research on expertise emphasises the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert

The NYT review of "Outliers" makes good reading on this subject, as well. Not everyone agrees with Malcolm Gladwell's thoughts on the subject, but he argues that talent is the third most important factor in success, behind practice and luck (being in the right place at the right time).

Ok.

Like this one?

This is so last year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/business/media/31billboard.html

how did Poland end up democratic and prosperous while Russia is autocratic and at the whim of oil/gas prices?

Naomi Klein answers (among others) this question in The Shock Doctrine. The Poles are where they are despite the 'foreign consultants' and have had a very rough time.

An excerpt from a NY Times review:

Even the shock of 9/11, she said in an interview, was "harnessed by leaders to end the discussion of global justice."

Nor are democratic governments exempt. Solidarity in Poland in 1989, she writes, was forced to reverse positions on which it was elected -- i.e., backing worker cooperatives -- and impose a state of emergency after being strong-armed by the I.M.F. and other lenders that refused to extend aid and credit unless Poland adopted a radical free-market program.

"We did not lose the battle of ideas," Ms. Klein likes to say. Alternatives to the free market were "crushed by army tanks and think tanks."

I highly recommend Shock Doctrine, a good antidote against Friedmannism. She makes some comparisons I feel uneasy about, but overall a worthwhile read.

Slightly different account here.

Reminds me of this whole Ahmadinejad "Wiping Israel from the map" translation flap.

Once an incorrect translation takes hold it is pretty much impossible to correct.

I was surprised that something is still made in the USA. And it no longer is:

Etch A Sketch moves to Shenzhen, China.

You're right. And I don't get that reaction on the part of the media. It's weird that in all this time I've never seen a flag-draped coffin arriving in the U.S. in the news. That policy isn't as respectful as it might seem, because the preferences of the families are probably quite mixed.

Here in Canada there was a huge outrage when it was decided by the government that the media would not be permitted to attend and record the arrival of our deceased soldiers from Afghanistan. The issue came to a head when some of the families wanted the media there -- ostensibly so that others across the country could share in the grieving. Eventually the government realized it was a mistake to force the issue one way or the other against the wishes of the relevant family, and now it is entirely their choice whether the media is there or not. That's a much better and more respectful arrangement than having the government forcing the issue. Thanks to the debate it's far better than what we had before.

This kind of debate is the way democracy is supposed to work, and the media is part of the equation. Shutting them out discourages proper democratic debate over the issues. Apparently the Thai government doesn't get this, and wants to roll things back to the 19th century. It's idiotic lese-majeste law is a symptom of a more serious problem than respecting the monarchy. If the Thai king wished to put Thailand on the road to a modern democracy he could push to abolish the law.

You have to ask why a monarch who is such a great guy needs the law to protect him from insults anyway. If I want to call Queen Liz an old hag, I can. That's freedom. The Thai monarch can't take it like Liz can?

Actually, they did the same thing in Iraq under Saddam Hussein..

I remember reading that when it came out. Maybe some of the NYT's columnists and reporters should read it. They might learn something.

Actually, they did the same thing in Iraq under Saddam Hussein..

The "counterfeit coin" is the false premise that the individual exists to serve the collective blah blah rhetorical masturbation blah blah blah

You have the right to your own opinion, but you don't have the right to your own set of facts. And it's a fact that Republicans suck at any policy you care to name. More jobs were created under Clinton than Reagan and both Bushes combined. $10,000 invested under Republican presidents would have grown to a paltry $11,733 ($51,211 if you exclude Herbert Hoover), but over $300,000 under Democratic presidents.

I got a Wii Fit back in September and lost twenty pounds by New Year's Day. I was earning 30 Wii Fit points per day for most of that period, plus I was walking with my kids two miles every Saturday on a local nature trail.

Unfortunately, between the New Year's Eve party and a bunch of unhealthy left overs, I managed to put about a third of that back. Plus, bad weather has kept me off the nature trail, which certainly doesn't help. And all of that has hurt my motivation, so where before I'd done over 100 consecutive days of exercise, now I'm skipping more days than I'm doing. I've apparently fallen into the trap described in this article. Overall, though, I'm still doing better than most years, where I would put on ten pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and never take it off. Damn you, homemade English Toffee!

BTW, Nintendo has created a pedometer that talks to your DS. The cartridge allows you to download your Mii for an experience similar to Wii Fit. What's missing is apparently any way to upload data into Wii Fit, but that may show up in a future channel.

I agree completely. Imagine what would happen if all of a sudden Ars or The New York Times asked that slashdot stop copying headlines and deep linking their stories. They would lose a sizable amount of page views.

Despite the financial troubles, The New York Times gets it. That's why they made subscription free and have pages like this one, which basically let people know what articles are getting deep linked. That's also probably part of the reason they took this case to court.

The GP was correct that there was a constitutional issue:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/is-clinton-eligible-to-join-the-cabinet/

The issue stems from Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution, which says: âoeNo Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time.â Emoluments refers to compensation.

However, the issue has been addressed:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/bush-approves-bill-reducing-secretary-of-states-pay/

The GP was correct that there was a constitutional issue:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/is-clinton-eligible-to-join-the-cabinet/

The issue stems from Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution, which says: âoeNo Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time.â Emoluments refers to compensation.

However, the issue has been addressed:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/bush-approves-bill-reducing-secretary-of-states-pay/

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/bush-approves-bill-reducing-secretary-of-states-pay/

They reduced the pay of the position to make it constitutional.

You do realize that the FISA court of review has stated that the TSP was legal and constitutional even when one person was inside the US right?

I could say I don't know why this didn't make it onto the Slashdot site but then again I already know the answer to that. But seriously, look it over, you can find the complete redacted ruling and see for yourself what it says. I would caution doing a google search over it, it seems about every liberal site that has caught wind of it has blew gaskets at the prospect of their belief system being destroyed and have attempted everything possible to "say it isn't so" including accusing the courts of being uneducated idiots to somehow pandering for reelection to somehow being obligated to the administration who was leaving office. Take them with a grain of salt.

Can you imagine how cool it would be if they used an interactive zoomable pie chart like this one that shows inflation.

You'd start with every government department visible, you could then zoom in to any spending program and see how it was made up, area being proportional to cost.

If recovery.gov don't do it, someone should.

places that don't have the reporting and oversight capabilities we have here

Sorry try again. India has been better at handling this economic crisis than many of the western nations:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20nocera.html

Lessons from India

Yup, India is corrupt and India has had it's share of scams and bad companies. However, this does not mean that all Indian companies are bad and that India has a complete lack of regulations.

One of the things I always enjoyed from MAD was the fold-in images (they have a name, but that escapes me right now).

I found this overview - very interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html

Let's start here:

White House Vandalized In Transition, G.A.O. Finds

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63

That doesn't confirm much. It doesn't even say how many keyboards, out of the 62 replaced, were missing W keys. It could be just a few. But I'm guessing zero. Who has claimed to have personally seen the supposed vandalism? I find it odd nobody ever took pictures of it. The GAO interviewed 100 people, which is enough to get several people to report rumors they had heard as truth. I wouldn't be surprised if there were even a few people who had developed false memories of the events after the rumor had gone around a while.

Check out the following links:

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/23/vandals/print.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/06/13/scandal/print.html
http://www.fair.org/activism/vandal-update.html

FISC needs to approve surveillance requiring a warrant within 72 hours under FISA's emergency authorization provisions.

The FISC affirmation I am referring to is the August 2008 court decision affirming that the surveillance conducted under the guise of the temporary Protect America Act, and thus the current law as amended by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, is legal -- and that includes warrantless monitoring of identified foreign intelligence targets, and the technical mechanisms via which their communications can be located, targeted, and extracted from data streams.

The main issue between 2001 and 2007 was whether the same collection -- both collection that is explicitly legal now, and collection on US Persons identified to be communicating with terrorist targets -- was allowable under the administration's Article II and AUMF claims. That is a question that is not legally clear cut, and may never be answered by the courts. Then again, one of the ongoing court cases relating to the surveillance may end up getting that question answered-- and if it is, is it productive to go back and prosecute individuals who acted in the interests of protecting the United States from attack for activity that has subsequently been made explicitly legal by a supermajority of Congress and affirmed by the relevant court? Moreover, if the current law stays the same under President Obama the current political composition of Congress, was it really the exclusively political issue it was made out to be, or was that just political opportunism?

Having an issue with what you believe or infer to be the technical implementation that supports this collection is different from whether or not foreign intelligence should be able to be collected on US soil. The hallmark of the FISA amendments are judiciously protecting US persons, while removing restrictions on where and how foreign intelligence on non-US Persons can be collected simply because it's traveling through a glass pipe in San Francisco instead of over the air on the streets of Yemen. When the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches all agree with the new principles relating to foreign collection, the discussion doesn't distill down to the minutiae of what exact parts and techniques are being used to actually enable practical collection.

A technical surveillance mechanism can always be abused. It is our system of laws, courts, and other oversight that prevent it, not technical implementations or controls. The key is oversight and accountability, not the ability to publicly examine every piece of equipment and line of code. And in the context of foreign intelligence collection, that happens via the intelligence oversight committees in both houses of Congress and their staffs, the legal counsel and Inspector Generals' offices of Intelligence Community components, the Justice Department, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- among these are technical experts familiar with exactly how the implementations are deployed and used.

Cause aside from despotic tyranny - that is about the only system where a government official can order around a business he/she does not own.

People should be free, not inanimate entities.

But I'll compromise. If they give up their special favors from the government, I'll support the government removing extra responsibilities:

Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Like the fact he said he wouldn't hire lobbyists?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/opinion/23fri1.html?_r=2

Oh wait, he did.

"would leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantanamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the CIA's detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama Bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured."

He's left himself a backdoor for warrantless wiretap searches(as this article/summary shows); for continued CIA interrogation techniques he's supposedly ending today; and for keeping Gitmo open, should we capture the right people.

See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7DE1E39F936A25751C1A96F948260

As it turned out, Xerox waited too long to enforce its copyrights. Note that the Apple spokesperson never claimed that Apple had a license from Xerox - a more compelling argument than claiming that there was no relationship between the GUIs. From that I conclude that even Apple lawyers knew there was no such agreement.

Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation. This is a fact.

Your definition of regressive is not quite accurate.

A regressive tax is a tax where people pay a larger percentage of their total income toward the tax as their total income decreases.

With sales taxes, even though the tax rate on purchases is the same for everyone, if poorer people spend a larger proportion of their income on these purchases, then the tax will be regressive.

Bridge and tunnel tolls are also regressive. If a person has to commute across a bridge, and pays $1 each way, at the end of the year, this will be a larger percentage of a poor person's income than of a rich person's.

On the issue of gasoline taxes alone, the NYTimes published a quite revealing map of the percentage of income spent on gas across the country.

You can see that in the incredibly-poor Mississippi River delta, the residents spend 16% of their total income on gasoline. In much of the northeast, the figure is under 5%. If you click back and forth between the 1st and 3rd tabs, the percentage of income spent on gasoline is almost a perfect correlation with total income. This shows that according to the definition, a tax that depends only on the amount of gasoline purchased is regressive.

In case you are wondering why you were modded troll, it is because all of what you said has been proven to be 100% bullshit.

" The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said today that ''damage, theft, vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex'' in the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. The agency put the cost at $13,000 to $14,000, including $4,850 to replace computer keyboards, many with damaged or missing W keys.

Some of the damage, it said, was clearly intentional. Glue was smeared on desk drawers. Messages disparaging President Bush were left on signs and in telephone voice mail. A few of the messages used profane or obscene language."

I've always said that the G.A.O were a bunch of trolls. Them and those New York Times people. I hope you make sure and head over to their sites and mod them down as trolls for spreading these lies. 100% bullshit.

Even George W Bush defended the Clinton Administration and said there was no vandalism. And face it, Bush is the kind of guy that would tell people loudly if there were any.

Nothing can stop you from making assumptions. Why bother looking for some facts when you can just assume that the Bush Administration would take a certain action because you have so completely figured them out that you don't even need to say, do research.

Or you could have easily looked it up on say... Google and read the first article to come up.

"The Bush White House was deeply disappointed with the report. Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to President Bush, had demanded that the accounting office provide more detail, including the full text of graffiti and other messages that were ''especially offensive or vulgar.''"

You can read the full text if you like at:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63

It's from 2002, so I don't blame you for having not read it. Its only been available for seven years.

Let's start here:

White House Vandalized In Transition, G.A.O. Finds
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63

But if you want, you can search for "clinton white house vandalism" if you like.

To be honest, I thought every one knew that transitions of the White House between parties were filled with this stuff.

Is the Bush staff playing dirty pool with the Obama staff? Probably, but its more of a tradition than an isolated Bush is Evil incident.

And how long has it been since a true virus was attacking windows?

Just this week.

It's always trojans, worms or adware and has been for several years.

A worm differs from a virus only in so much that it doesn't need to copy itself into a system program. For all intents and purposes however, the difference between the two terms is antiquated.

You missed the entire point. Did the police say "we have arrested someone for the murders" or did they say "we have arrested OJ Simpson"? Did they televise and broadcast the trial, even though at that point he had not been found guilty?

I think you know the answers to this. I'm also very puzzled by you asking "when did they release evidence to the public?" The answer is before the trial. LOTS of evidence was released and police made statements keeping the public informed of the state of the case. The prosecutor didn't release as much as the police did, but release they did.

Two examples:

OJ's Statement to the LAPD
November 29, 1994 issue of STAR

Prosecutors say the results of DNA tests done on samples found at the crime site and at Mr. Simpson's Brentwood estate convincingly identify him as the killer.
Thursday, January 23, 1995

The trial began on January 25, 1995, btw. So does that satisfy your request? It's even specifically about the DNA test. I would try to track down more for you, but have you ever tried to google for just stuff written before the Simpson trial? It's a pain.

It's off the subject, but the reason they failed to convict Simpson was pure bungling on the prosecutor's side combined with the fact that OJ being a well-liked celebrity could help but prejudice the jury.

Anyhow, this is all actually much more similar to the Rodney King beating. The videotape in that case is a direct parallel to the torture tapes and photos. The videotape shows what it shows. People should be able to view it and judge for themselves. It's even more applicable because they were never able to meet the legal standard to convict the police officers of anything. But it was very important that the public saw the video so they could judge for themselves.

Sorry, that is not what I am reading. Some are stating, quite plainly, that they do not deserve any protection. Until people are charged, which I have not seen happening, their identities should be obscured as they may be innocent or found innocent.

There are two possibilities:
(1) They are government agents acting lawfully in their official capacity, in which case neither the acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny and accountability (barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done"), or
(2) They are government agents acting unlawfully and contrary to their official responsibilities, in which case neither their acts nor their identities deserve protection against public scrutiny (again, barring some other reason than "people might not like what they've done").

They are entitled to protection from retaliation in the same way that all citizens are entitled to protection from violent crime, but not in any other way.

[citation needed]
I have seen no investigations as yet, only the threat of same.

Then you haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention, which is hardly anyone's fault but your own. The amount of media attention the various investigations and prosecutions received was immense.

Here's just a few bits:
Military prosecution in Abu Ghraib scandal ends (01/11/2008)
For Abu Ghraib, a limited prosecution (03/29/2006)
The Unlearned Lessons of Abu Ghraib (10/19/2006)
Iraq prison report details lax discipline (5/8/2004)
CIA personnel, civilians cited in abuse (8/20/2004)
Trial Starts in Abu Ghraib Death (5/25/2005)
C.I.A. to Avoid Charges in Most Prisoner Deaths (10/23/2005)

In anticipation of the Vista jokes, the following excerpt from an article on the subject may help shed some light on the matter:

The direct impact of falling personal-computer sales, which roiled Intel last week, were evident in Microsoft's results, as sales of its PC operating-system software dove 8 percent to $3.98 billion from $4.33 billion last year ... Blaming market uncertainty, Microsoft declined to issue a revenue or earnings forecast for the rest of its fiscal year.

I think a fair translation of the above would be that the economy is in the toilet no one knows if Vista will sell. Err ... Windows 7.

On the other hand, with people being put out of work, it's a lot less fun to bash Microsoft.

This article is rubbish. I can blame anything on the down market but the fact is people need OSs and M$ has done a lousy job with Vista. It didn't sell MUCH BEFORE the market went down.

In anticipation of the Vista jokes, the following excerpt from an article on the subject may help shed some light on the matter:

The direct impact of falling personal-computer sales, which roiled Intel last week, were evident in Microsoft's results, as sales of its PC operating-system software dove 8 percent to $3.98 billion from $4.33 billion last year ... Blaming market uncertainty, Microsoft declined to issue a revenue or earnings forecast for the rest of its fiscal year.

I think a fair translation of the above would be that the economy is in the toilet no one knows if Vista will sell. Err ... Windows 7.

On the other hand, with people being put out of work, it's a lot less fun to bash Microsoft.

Well, actually, foreign operative would fall within the exceptions for a warrant within FISA so you wouldn't need to prove anything front of a judge.

A poor choice of words on my part. I'm thinking of a scenario where I am a U.S. citizen working for foreign interests, thus becoming their operative.

The TSP which has been ruled legal in it's original incarnation was never designed to pick up evidence other then what was necessary to foil terrorist plots or to arrest terrorists. It didn't care if you were speeding last week or took acid or ran over the neighbors cat. It was only intended to and able to act on matters of national security.

Well yes, of course it doesn't. It never does. And neither do IRS agents abuse their access to look up the tax records of celebrities. Neither does law enforcement use their authority to harass people they don't like. Never at all.

Of particular note from the article you linked:

The company argued that âoeby placing discretion entirely in the hands of the executive branch without prior judicial involvement, the procedures cede to that branch overly broad power that invites abuse,â the court wrote.

But, the court ruled, âoethis is little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith.â(TM)

âoeThat sort of risk exists even when a warrant is required,â it said.

That just floors me. It is essentially aruging that warrents are useless. We should do away with them. What do we need with governmental oversight anyway?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rail against authority and fight the machine. But I am a firm believer that oversight, however imperfect, must be maintained. Even corrupt oversight tends to leave paper trails that can later be followed to convict the corrupt. And so if the authorities executing this "war on terrorism" wish to do so, then by all means require them to leave that paper trail.

It really has be wondering about the sanity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. A cynic might note that they are a part of the very problem they were being asked to address.

Well, actually, foreign operative would fall within the exceptions for a warrant within FISA so you wouldn't need to prove anything front of a judge. But that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that if they do listen to your conversations, whether you being outside the country and calling home or inside the country calling out, they were still limited in what evidence could be used against and anything else leading to you from those calls just like any other case. The TSP which has been ruled legal in it's original incarnation was never designed to pick up evidence other then what was necessary to foil terrorist plots or to arrest terrorists. It didn't care if you were speeding last week or took acid or ran over the neighbors cat. It was only intended to and able to act on matters of national security.

Microsoft will NEVER offer only time-limited (right-to-use) licenses for their Operating System and Office applications. I'm not arguing that they won't start offering it as an option, but they will always continue to offer permanent right-to-use licenses for those products.

Here's why...
Example 1: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/19/MNBH12DCV7.DTL from just one of the (many) times that California state legislature impasses over new budgets have frozen CA state government spending. (if they couldn't spend money on freakin nursing homes there's no way they'd be able to send the rent payment to MS)
Example 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/nyregion/06budget.html?pagewanted=1 from when the New Jersey state legislature impasse over new budgets froze NJ state government spending. (shutdown the casinos to cost $16 million a day and put nearly 100K people out of work ... ain't gonna send the rent payment to MS)
Example 3: (thank goodness this hasn't happened in a while) http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-16/index.html from when the U.S. federal government impasse over new budgets shutdown federal government spending. (shutdown the national monuments and put more than a quarter million people out of work ... no way they could send the Word rent payment to MS!)

Neither the U.S. federal government nor any of the state governments are going to accept the risk of their PCs shutting down the next time budget arguments cause a spending freeze, so Microsoft will always have to offer a non-subscription version of their Operating System and Office.

The Unemployment and GNP figures from 1933 to 1937 beg to differ with the retcon of history you repeated verbatim from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Paul Krugman kindly posted the actual data for those of us living in the reality based community - we lost a year when FDR foolishly listened to conservatives and thereby dropped the ball, but we were digging ourselves out at the same rate during WW II as from 1933 to 1937.

I'd like to publicly thank Paul Krugman for advising me of the of the upcoming financial meltdown with detailed info of what was going to go wrong, in what order, and what to watch out for. Some of the things I might well have caught, y'know, without reading his column (I can't see going for an ARM when the Fed has bottomed out interest rates no matter *what* Paul Krugman wrote.). But having it all mapped out has kept my head a lot further above water than it might have been otherwise.

Don't people that listen to Fox notice that, y'know, the stuff they say is going to happen . . . never does?

Pug

Link?

Cause the right-wing NY Times, covering a GAO report in the middle of '02, specifically disagrees with your "debunked myth" of damaged W keys.

Marriage is not really a privilege or immunity of citizens of the US, at least as referred to in that clause. If you think about it, there is nothing right now stopping a gay couple from declaring themselves married. What they do not recieve by doing so is the legal privileges currently associated with marriage, so it really falls to an equal protection issue. The best way to provide equal protection is to provide no legal privileges whatsoever. The government shouldn't be in the business of licensing marriage in the first place. At one point, they didn't.

You quoted salon.com which is no better than quoting a propaganda piece.

*I* quoted the New York Times, which is also corroborated by the L.A. Times, Newsweek, and of course the U.S. Congress itself (the General Accounting Office).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/12/nation/na-clinton12
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167691

If this was such a smooth transition, then what would you call the incident with the Blair House??

...is available here (unlike the odd "preview" of the speech noted in the /. text).

obama is a secret communist muslim!

(nevermind the contradiction of terms in the idiotic propaganda some people believe)

i like that even in heavily republican places in the country, like oklahoma, since the election, approval and support for obama has swelled:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20tulsa.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Not a single county in Oklahoma stirred from the orderly phalanx marching behind Mr. McCain, the senator from Arizona who was the Republican nominee, and Mr. Driskill, the owner of an insurance agency in downtown Tulsa, said he was proud to be in those ranks. Statewide, two out of three voters supported Mr. McCain, the highest percentage in the nation.

But that staunchly Republican, conservative Oklahoma is harder to find now. While there are countless Mr. Driskills here -- and hardly anyone doubts that Mr. McCain would easily win again in a redo of the vote -- there are also new fractures and fault lines as some voters have shifted toward accepting what the rest of the country wrought in giving Mr. Obama a lopsided victory.

now that obama has a strong mandate, even a begruding one in republican strongholds, please, let him deliver

In his personal life, he continues to test what is possible, requesting that a fiber-optic connection be installed to his house on the border of London's affluent Chelsea and South Kensington neighborhoods.

"I want to find out what it's like to have a gigabit connection to the home," he said. "It is not because I need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want to see what you do differently." (emphasis mine)

From that alone, you can tell he reads slashdot.

The second best quote from TFA:

"Look, I have a very privileged life, right?" Mr. Shuttleworth said. "I am a billionaire, bachelor, ex-cosmonaut. Life couldn't easily be that much better. Being a Linux geek sort of brings balance to the force."

Kudos on reaching the self-sustainable mark Mr. Shuttleworth! Let's hope you really do make the world a better, more free, place.