Slashdot Mirror

Great point, Lad. Further, beyond the barbarism of our government's torture techniques, they're based on methods used by the Chinese in the Korean War specifically to produce false confessions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ref=todayspaper

Here's what happens when you go Intel... :) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE2DF1739F931A25756C0A9649C8B63

I didn't use any straw men, you attempted to prove I did but instead proved you have no idea what the fuck a straw man is, but will lie about it anyway.

Check this reply if you still don't understand how you misrepresented my view in order to attack it.

Oh, by the way, check out this New York Times article. That Shultz guy I quoted before pops up again...of course, you're likely to just believe the deniers like Powell or Armitage.

It's painful to watch you try so hard to find SOMETHING to attack me over since everything you've tried has been refuted and you look like an idiot as a result.

On the contrary, it's quite pleasurable to watch you freak out and constantly ignore the entire point of my debate. I will repeat it again.

If you give someone a tool while you know what their intention for the tool is, you are partially responsible.

Further, if it is your desire for their intention to occur, then you share even more responsibility than above. In essence, you are getting someone else to do your job.

At the barest essence, that is my point. You still have yet to address it. You're unlikely to start now.

are you saying because I call names you can dismiss me? YOUR IDIOT ASS DID TOO, so are you just stupid, a hypocrite, or both?

Yes, I am saying that because you call me names, your argument loses strength. It's a distraction and adds nothing to the discussion; it only takes away from any point you are trying to make. I can only hypothesize that you were raised in a family where disrespecting people was considered acceptable.

It wasn't until my fourth reply to you that I started to get cheeky, and only then because it was clear you are irrational, and I still never once called you any names (However, in reaction to your accusations of lying or stupidity, I did begin to call into question exactly how intelligent you may or may not be; and yet even still I did acknowledge your very lucid point that the Geneva Protocol doesn't ban storage or manufacture of chemical weapons [though moot, since it was a straw man])

I'd like you to note that, before I even replied to you, you were already attacking me (calling me stupid). I invite you to read over my replies again, and please cite for me any one time I called you a moron, a liar, an idiot, or any other name. For fun, keep track of how many different names you call me, and how many times you call me those names, just to compare the relative order of magnitude.

I own you and you know it, which is why you keep lying.

Ah, is this one of those times when you call someone a liar because you're the one doing the lying? Do you know how much I enjoy watching you squirm, trying to avoid discussing my actual point and instead throwing names at me and baseless assertions of invalidity while falsely claiming that I'm lying?

I looked at some more of your other posts. All you do is go around, trying to rip on people so you can feel better about yourself. Honestly, a small part of me feels sad that you feel the need to boost your ego by throwing shit at strangers over the Internet.

In a long-awaited decision in a four-year-old trademark lawsuit against eBay brought by the jeweler Tiffany and Company, Judge Richard Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled Monday that the online retailer does not bear a legal responsibility to prevent its users from selling counterfeit items on its marketplace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/technology/15ebay.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=login

...they don't have to police their network...

And today a judge said they really don't have to -- "the online retailer does not bear a legal responsibility to prevent its users from selling counterfeit items on its marketplace."

...people I knew didn't block text messages from the internet. As reported by the NYT: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/how-to-block-cellphone-spam/ AOL IM clients will look like internet traffic and be blocked by this, no?

But it just makes me wonder if that's not another reason the military is lowering its recruitment standards by allowing more criminals in. Small numbers for sure, but getting bigger. It might be easier to get those types to blindly follow any orders.

There were some criminals in when I was in too, though mostly to escape jail. "Serve tyme in the military or in jail" sort of thing. Actually most were good at following orders though I wasn't, I'd ask "why" and "how" and if I thought it was stupid I'd say it. I guess my first CO, Commanding Officer, liked that because he frequently asked me if I wanted to go to this school or that school. For instance one school he sent me to was for Explosive Ordinance Disposal, EOD, after which I was one of the designated EOD experts in the unit. He also asked me if I wanted to take college classes, they offered classes on post and helped pay for them. I went in the military to save money to go to college so I took one class, but had trouble taking more.

Falcon

I sincerely hope you are right. But it just makes me wonder if that's not another reason the military is lowering its recruitment standards by allowing more criminals in. Small numbers for sure, but getting bigger. It might be easier to get those types to blindly follow any orders.

The 2nd amendment might protect you from Sheriff Lobo or Mexican banditos, but the Feds will steamroll right over you.

Unlike in China which had to send in outside troops to deal with the protests in Tiananmen Square, the local military units like the 38th refused to attack the protesters, you couldn't get a military unit to attack civilians easily in the US. It would be asking for a civil war in the US military to ask a military unit to attack civilians. Have you served in the military? I have and plenty of those I knew while in would be more likely to frag someone giving such an order.

Falcon

Note that "owned by Verizon" apparently means "20.5% owned by Verizon"

Note also that the TELUS mobile Web service in question is WAP-based, so it's not direct access to the "real Internet"; a lot of sites might be unavailable because they don't offer WAP or because any Web-to-WAP gatewaying TELUS might be using can't handle them.

(BTW, is there any evidence that anybody named "Dylan Patten" has ever written anything, or is writing anything, for Time Magazine? And has he actually talked to the sources that the I Power site claims he has? And did those sources say what that site claims they do, or did they say something else that was misinterpreted?)

Yes, but it is time that India starts to play fair. The west has created many open trade policies. India is doing a china action back at all the other countries. They have total protectionism in place.

Yet India actually has a trade deficit. It's like protectionism doesn't work.

If protectionism doesn't work, then what would? Well, how about a tax structure based on property (what foreign investors have) rather than income (what domestic workers have). Currently, the US sells off assets to pay for consumption. This causes a trade deficit, as the assets aren't counted in the trade flow (while the consumption is).

Taxing property would tend to discourage investment. This can be counteracted by shifting from income taxes to consumption taxes. A side effect of this would be to allow the tax on property to vary independently from that of consumption. This is good in that during a recession, what we do is try to counteract the natural tendency to save by encouraging consumption. Our current method is to make it easier to borrow money. Unfortunately, if we make it to easy to borrow money, we get a bubble (currently housing; previously dot com), as some people borrow the money to invest rather than to consume.

Since we would have the ability to tax consumption separately from investment, we would have the ability to simultaneously expand the money supply (by issuing more money) and to control inflation (by taxing consumption). Or we could combat deflation by reducing the tax on consumption and increasing the tax on property.

At the same time, we take out much of the current complexity of the tax code, which gives special treatment to income from investment (e.g. capital gains) and costs of investing (e.g. depreciation). We also take away the incentive for speculation (e.g. buying a stock in the hope that the stock price will go up, even though the stock itself is not income producing).

This kind of plan would work uniquely well for the US. As the printer of the de facto world currency, the US has more stable prices of assets relative to the dollar than do other countries. This allows the US to do riskier investments than other countries. When that's an investment in a biotech firm that may or may not produce anything useful, that's good. When it's a speculation in a piece of property, it's bad in that it drives up prices in the US. A property tax reduces the incentive to long term speculation on non-income producing assets, as the speculator now has to pay taxes based on the price paid rather than the income produced. Interestingly, it doesn't reduce the incentive to risk money by loaning as much as it reduces the incentive to buy. This allows for a continuation of higher investment in risky activities (in the form of loans) while reducing speculation in assets.

Another thing that taxing investment and consumption separately allows is the use of different taxes for different outlays. For example, it makes sense for defense and law enforcement to be paid by property taxes, as defense and law enforcement are most valuable to those with lots of property. It makes sense for welfare and social security to be paid out of consumption taxes, as both increase consumption.

I could use the same argument that the liberal biased web site is pure propaganda that downplays the incident in that he took home copies and deserves a slap on the wrist for breaking federal law.

The New York Times covers it that he "removed the classified material inadvertently".

I'll cite Wikipedia On Sandy Berger "In April 2005, Berger pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material from the National Archives in Washington. According to the lead prosecutor in the case Berger only took copies of classified information and that no original material was destroyed; however, there is notable controversy and speculation that he might have removed or destroyed originals of other unknown documents as well."

CNN has an article on it as well.

He plead guilty to removing the documents and got a slap on the wrist.

My statement was that the Clinton administration got rid of emails, documents, and memos as well. Berger pleading guilty to those charges proves that what I said is true, be it that a right-wing, left-wing, or neutral source is cited, they all say the same thing that he plead guilty to removing documents and memos.

This is proof of what happened under the Clinton administration. Now please show proof that it happens under the Bush administration as well. Using your own logic, don't use a liberal biased web site to do so. Now let's see if you can do it.

Your comment on antiquated power systems reminded me of an article I saw on the New York Times a couple of years ago. As a New Yorker (and an engineer) I was totally stupefied that anyone in Manhattan were still using DC power. (Data center trolls - I see you - I mean "DC off the grid" which no one would be crazy enough to hook straight into.) To make matters worse, most of the tunnels (we don't have telephone poles) are below sealevel and consequently, filled with water.

I once asked a Coned linesman about that. He say that some of the wiring in those tunnels is over a hundred years old. How do they keep them dry? By pumping N2 through the lines. So if you are ever downtown and you see a random LN2 tank on a street corner, you can say with relative assurity that it is feeding a power line. Lets hope superconductors can swim!

People have been blowing up conventional electricity pylons for decades. They make great targets because a single tower collapse takes out the whole circuit. Of course we call them 'heroes' not 'terrorists', but the principle is the same: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501EFDC1330F935A15757C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=

turbines similar to wave and tidal generators in rivers

Like these? nytimes - East River Fights Bid to Harness Its Currents for Electricity

Then I hand them an after action report from the CIA released under the FOIA concerning the overthrow of the government of Iran, known as TPAJAX. I quote, with some pointers and emphasis:

"In July support was sought from the PW [Psychological Warfare] Staff. Both the branch [of the CIA] and higher levels were anxious to have certain items, including the texts of news articles, commentaries and editorials, appear in papers in this country... This support was not forthcoming. It appeared to the branch as if the staff lacked contacts capable of placing material so the American publisher was unwitting as to it's source, as well as being able to see that no changes in theme or emphasis were made. In contrast to this relatively ineffective venture, the Iran desk of the State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist... it does appear that some improvement of capabilities might be desirable. Either those contacts used to secure the unwitting publication of material should be expanded and improved, or else there should be provision made for passing material directly to cleared editors and owners of press media."

This operation was carried out, according to the report, with 89 persons aware of it, which was "excessive."

So, yes, there is no doubt that a small number of CIA agents illegally ousted a democratic government, using the media as part of their PsyOps. To think that such operations are not part of the government's current arsenal is completely naive.

Check it out for yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/iran-cia-intro.pdf

Ask Copiepresse or the AP* about it.

* warning: NYTimes link. DNA sample may be required.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/opinion/10collins.html

....Congress can introduce any legislation they want to, AFTER the veto power is on the other foot. Now, if anyone thought that Barack Obama was going to be the black Che Guevara or some shit, get real. He's not a Clinton, not a Bush, and not McSame. That's a glorious thing in and of it's self. ;) No, he's not a Dennis Kucinich or a John Edwards, but he'll do for now. This isn't and never was about Barack Obama. He is merely a stepping stone to better, more Liberal things. Be happy, Democratic Left! We're putting the first black guy in the White House and he will do a good job there. Just think where we can go from here. If we can do this, maybe there is a President Kucinich or Cohen in our future after all. :) Check this out, fellow Lefties... Barack Obama said... LINK And I quote "my friends on the left". "My friends on the Left" What other Democratic presidential front runner ever said that? Ever?? Take the hint, people. Think about the gravity of this statement. I've been waiting all my life to have someone one step from the White House that acknowledges us directly and with pride instead of trying to publicly distance them self from us. It's ok to question what Obama does during his campaign, but we have to remember that he's a "friend". Let's question him like we would a friend, not as we would an enemy. For no matter what he does that rubs us the wrong way, the only alternative is McSame and the McLames that support him. Forget about the Right, forget about the Center. They've done nothing but harm. The Democratic party is ours and we're taking the White House in November. Until we do, nothing will get done.

Why didn't Obama try to stop this? He could have spoken out and got the rest of the dems behind him. Instead he voted in favor of it.

I have come to realize that Obama is just another politician who is nothing new. I was willing to support him, even though I did not agree with almost any of his policies (I'm fiscally conservative), until he started changing his views and becoming like most other politicians. When even the NY times has an editorial criticizing him, you know something is going wrong.

Unfortunately for me, this leaves McCain. And while I agree with him on how he wants to handle the economy, I don't believe he's what the country needs to recover from the politicians currently in DC.

There are markets in resold life insurance contracts, known as death futures. I don't know if there is a liquid market in life-expectancy-derived instruments, but insurers and pension funds should be keen to hedge some of their risk from increased life expectancy.

Therefore, if you know that life expectancy is going to increase more than most people think, you should take a position in these instruments and profit over the long term (that is, as soon as everyone else realizes that you are probably correct). On the other hand, if you already had a long position in a life expectancy swap so that you make money as expectations of life expectation increase, it would make sense to talk up your own research and encourage people to believe lifespans will get longer so that your investment will increase in value.

So have you made any such bets on life expectancy a few decades from now?

I don't know much about the field, but I'm curious to know how you feel about the research on natural selection and aging. I know that researchers have been able to significantly extend the lifespan of fruit flies by delaying reproduction. This suggests that some components of aging are acted on by natural selection, and not merely the accumulation of damage to cells. Is this view incompatible with your view about accumulated molecular damage, and if so, why do you prefer the cell damage view?

Given that the ACLU apparently supports internal censorship, I don't see why Democrats wouldn't also.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/us/25mall.html?ei=5070&en=755b6ef80639603e&ex=1199250000&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1198684937-Kw0EHIKYqMSkvFdFc8IoWA

Court Ruling on Protests Curbs Malls in California

I'm surprised, these attempts by the Executive to ease their lives gets so much attention, when far grosser violations of the Executive/Judiciary powers have been accepted/condoned for decades.

The most glaring example is "licensing" in general, and licensing the drivers — taxpayers wishing to use the tax-payed public roads — in particular. The Executive government gives the licenses and is free to take them away — without any Judicial oversight and without having to convict the accused of any sort of wrongdoing. Even if in most locales a traffic citation can be disputed in front of a judge, it is only because the Executive does not want to bother with their own procedures. And in New York they do — you only get to argue in a "traffic court", which is part of the Executive branch.

Why does not it shock anybody, that more and more activities require a license, and thus the Executive Branch has more and more ways to make more and more people's lives miserable without even obtaining any sort of conviction (civil or criminal)?

I'm not saying, the government's ability to monitor foreign phone-calls is a complete non-issue. But far more important impediments to freedom — taxpayer has no right (which can only be taken away by a court) to use a public road, only a privilege (which police can withdraw) to do so — have existed for decades with nary a whisper of outrage...

Similarly, why do we accept, that operating a business (or renovating one's own house!) is not a right (the sacred pursuit of pursuit of happiness), but a mere privilege, exercising which requires paying fees and, quite often, jumping through significant hoops and accepting serious limitations?

Actually (sadly) he's also quietly backing away on the war issue too. In practice I think that either candidate will be MUCH more competent than the Bush administration (of course, the same could be said of half the monkeys at the Bronx Zoo).

And I doubt that there will be any real difference in the Iraq withdrawal in either case. Obama says he wants out immediately, but secretly doesn't want to get saddled with a quick withdrawal. McCain says he will fight to the bitter end, but secretly doesn't want to get saddled with Bush's unpopular war for any length of time.

The only real advantage to supporting Obama over McCain is Supreme Court appointments. Right now, the Supreme Court is just teetering on the verge of becoming a true hardcore right-wing institution which will last a VERY long time. One more young radical conservative and you can say goodbye to legal abortions, any semblance of constitutional rights, etc.

What's next? Having only automotive engineers be the only people who can run the automated air quality tests you have to do in your respective states?

On a similar note, New York's government has recently tried to pass a law requiring licensing for the people operating air-quality monitoring devices:

Our mutual goal is to prevent false alarms and unnecessary public concern by making sure that we know where these detectors are located and that they conform to standards of quality and reliability.

See? It is all for our own good. Don't you worry your pretty little head and let the (licensed) professionals do their jobs. And when/if the Executive government decides to withdraw a license of some of the operators, it can do that — without the hurdles of going through the Judiciary — just as it can already do with the drivers' licenses. (What an invention that was!)

That demand didn't stop Qwest from telling them to go fuck themselves. Being a pansy is hardly an excuse for breaking the law on a massive scale.

No. A condition of the cease fire was that Iraq would allow complete access to UN inspection teams. The goal was to find out if they had any secret missile or WMD programs. They where to have total and free access. That is "spying" except that it isn't any type of secert. Iraq had no right to privacy or any right to secrecy after the war. In other words they where not cooperating.

No, that is not "spying". This is spying. The UN inspection teams did not have the goal of planning a coup against Saddam, nor mapping areas for effective bombing raids.

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future but in terms of display technology, I think rollable displays will be common by 2015. The rollable screens have an obvious form factor appeal. The devices will probably be cylinder shaped (think paper towel tube, but a bit smaller) with a virtual keyboard. There are already early versions of both rollable displays and virtual keyboards in existence, see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/technology/06novelties.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin and http://www.virtualdevices.net/Products.htm, respectively. By 2015 rollable displays will have full color, etc. and virtual keyboards will hopefully have haptic attributes. This is just my best guess before my morning coffee! http://backpackcomputing.com/

The media is actually reporting things right this time. It's just that people infer what they want to believe.

If they were reporting things right, they would address the inference and refute it.

But that's just me, I have high standards.

At least there was some coverage of last month's final report on the exaggerations and lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq. But NBC, ABC, and CBS actually ignored it, while MSNBC dedicated only 90 seconds to the story.

You'd think this would be big news.

But then, only a tiny handful of US news outlets reported on Colin Powell's use of a plagiarized and largely outdated 10-year-old term paper (written by a California college student) in his presentation of WMD "evidence" to the UN.

The US media likes wars and all this Nationalist fervor because not only does it sell papers, but the parent companies of our media outlets profit mightily as well. So, alas, truth-telling presents a major conflict of interest for the media here.

For the raw facts, there's really only a few sources left.

Bush is trying to diminish FISA's control over his actions for good reasons.

FISA was established when the nation was not at war. The idea was that the CIA wouldn't engage in domestic surveillance because the FBI is supposed to do that. If the FBI wanted information the CIA had, it had to go to the FISA court to get it. That barricade made sense when it was established but had the side effect of hobbling legitimate inquiries. To wit, after the Cole bombing, the FBI had solid information that Al Qaeda was behind it and they had good information that Al Qaeda was established here in the states. They asked the CIA what the CIA knew and the CIA refused to divulge that they knew two Al-Qaeda operatives were in San Diego. The CIA had tracked them while following a meeting in Malaysia. The CIA didn't divulge that information to the FBI until late in the summer of 2001. The CIA justified its failure to pass the information on, despite being asked point blank in several meetings, to "The Wall", a reference to the barrier established by the FISA court.

After 9/11 when the 9/11 commission looked at why we missed several signals that could have thwarted 9/11, the FISA court played a dominant role. We're at war and Bush is trying to win it. He views FISA as an impediment to that goal and like presidents before him, i.e. Roosevelt and Lincoln, is pushing the boundaries of the Constitution.

Whether Bush is right or wrong comes down to a lot more than 'rules are for other people, not us.'

Ahem, ahem...

I am not really impressed by B&M gates foundation... and the use they have given to it:

e-Mexico.

Which was about to be kickstarted with Open Source (with the backup of HP, IBM, Sun, etc)... until Bill Gates went to Mexico to speak with Presidente Fox... aaaaand, guess what:

Microsoft has pledged $60 million in software and training to help fund Internet kiosks that are being built in remote communities. The software maker has also allotted $10 million to train workers in small and mid-size businesses, along with an additional grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the country's VAMOS MEXICO program to be used to move the country's libraries online.

Ohh, Vamos Mexico... the foundation from Fox's wife which has been investigated for allegued corruption practices.

Oh yes, B&M Gates foundation are God's messengers.

"If it's obvious you should be able to spell it out convincingly."

I shouldn't have to for people with more than an "espn world series of poker" understanding.

"It seems to me arbitrary sized bets give the computer more leeway to play it's perfectly calculated odds"

They'r enot arbitrary, they're designed to interfere with the pot odds, which is what the computer uss to calculate how to play "perfectly". By giving the computer the pot odds necessary to call in situations where perfect play would call for it, but where the imperfect information factor makes said call wrong, you have manipulated the information the computer is receiving.

This is the simplest example, there are others.

"Someone else pointed out that the deck is often not shuffled every hand. "

They were wrong. In fact, this would never go over in any real game, home games full of drunks at a party are the only place you'll see this. It is NOT normal, it is NOT common, and it is NOT acceptable by the rules of the game. So it can't be considered as it would NEVER happen in any game by any legitimate (or even semi-legitimate) sanctioning body.

"Even if it is, opportunities still exist for card counting. "

No, not really, apart from openly cheating. Card counting is not possible in a game that is not being cheated.

"and odds based on past betting behaviour."

These have nothing to do with pot odds and aren't considered by good players with learned opponents. You can't consider them.

"If you take all of that into account it's fairly complicated. "

I agree, but as I've explained, you don't take all of that into account, most of your numbers aren't factored, and counting doesn't exist in straight games. Cheating is irrelevant for this discussion, as no programmer would bother writing code for a machine to cheat. Players would notice immediately and never play that machine again. If you don't believe me, check out the "Absolute Poker scandal" where a player saw the other players hole cards, and was caught based on behavior. It was only after an investigation that the players were told that he did in fact have their hole cards, but they KNEW THAT ALREADY because of how he played. So cheating, which no sanctioning body would accept either, is not relevant, and therefore, your point about card counting is not relevant.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/

"But the (arbitrarily powerful) computer can do it precisely, without mistakes."

If your assumptions are true, but as I've shown, they aren't. In fact, apart from pot odds, your assumptions are just wrong.

The reason I asked if you played is because the points you were making betrayed a vary basic, beginner's understanding of the game, and the thought/rule/policy errors you've made only serve to reinforce that. For example, your point about "not shuffling" is comical, and would cause great amusement among people who play regularly.

I don't mean to be harsh, but you don't understand the game well enough to make any informed commentary about it.

And these estimates are not taking into account the amount of laptops retained for security purposes. Like here and here.
That's one thing that hasn't been thoroughly investigated yet.

"If a company develops a cure for AIDS, cancer, or the common cold, then it stands to reason that the company is going to make a lot of money"

Not necessarily. Orphan drugs are not patentable and therefore pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to pick up the huge costs of clinical trials for promising but dirt cheap molecules like dichloroacetate, 3-bromopyruvate, melatonin, to name but three.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html?pagewanted=print

William Safire suggests the same thing, only he's a little nicer about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/magazine/18onlanguage.html?scp=5&sq=safire+pun&st=nyt

The snippet:

A word of advice to the putative chief justice: when using a pun in a judicial opinion, do not write "excuse the bad pun." Remember, there are no "bad" puns - all plays on words are good, and the louder the groans they elicit, the better. And never forget, do not insult your audience by calling attention to the coming wordplay.

The pardon-my-pun flag says to the listener or reader, "You're probably too dim-witted to catch this, so I'm pointing it out to you beforehand."

The Belgian company Umicore specialises in this. They extract all the rare stuff. For some of it there is only one cubic meter available on the entire earth!
linky: link

Dan Gilbert did this experiment - its described his book Stumbling on Happiness. Here is the NYtimes article. In this video, he describes the theory of Choice Paralysis

The theory in short means we all think that "Breasts of my wife GREAT! All others suck! " (except Tina Fey.. and Natalie Portman and.. Penelope Cruz)

Wouldn't it be better to provide the print version? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/technology/29digi.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=print

If you were smart enough to read, instead of just repeating the left's propaganda, you'd know that no cures for ANYTHING have been found using embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are now responsible for curing over 100 conditions.

Be careful about using absolutes like "anything" or "nothing", "always", or "never". They frequently come back to bite you. Remember, all of this research is extremely nascent, most results are just getting to the human testing phases. Further, embryonic stem cell research receives far less funding (especially in the United States) and what research does occur here is very limited. Even with one hand tied behind its back though:

• Diabetes
• Cell differentiation (think growing new organs)
• Spinal cord injury
• Brain lesion repair
• Diffuse motor injury

• Ok, I'm tired to cutting and pasting. The list is way too long. And as far as Bush not opposing embryonic stem cell research, your daft if you actually believe otherwise. He's stated as much on many occasions. 8 years ago, embryonic stem cell research was a glint in sciences eye. It's no wonder that funding didn't exist before then.

  That we have received funding despite Bush's efforts is not a sign of his support. Simply compare the funding being provided within the U.S. to that being provided in other countries. It's no wonder the U.S. is lagging far behind the rest of the world. You know what happens when a societies backwards, ignorant beliefs prevent funding into cutting edge technology? The cutting edge sciencists leave.

You might be surprised. The obvious culprit is the government, but consider...

There have been numerous instances of "terrorist sympathizers" who hunt around online for people who say things they don't like, about their religion, their objectives, etc. They attempt to shut the blog down, even to discover the identity of the blogger to cause further trouble.

Can you imagine if this grew to further proportion, where you would be in danger of being "discovered" by some amateur terrorist or terrorists, who decided to make your life a living hell, or even to cut it short?

Sure, you had Theo van Gogh killed because he made a film that "they" didn't like, but what if they start aiming a bit "lower" on the food chain, start cyberstalking and tapping the phone lines of some guy who's an outspoking blogger or letter-to-the-editor afficianado?

How do you protect yourself at that level of obscurity?

Exactly, it's the terrorists who we should be worrying about. They DO want to know about us for obvious reasons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/technology/29digi.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&pagewanted=print

The Wikipedia distorts the colors and shrinks a 4x8 foot painting to postage stamp size and this is how you make a judgment?

A Pollock Is Sold, Possibly for a Record Price [2006]

For a better example: Lavender Mist No. 1 1950 Oil on canvas, Oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas. 7x10 feet. National Gallery of Art. Washington, DC.

The depth of a Pollack is not easily captured on screen. You need to visit a gallery.

The element of chance in Pollack's "drip paintings" is no less an illusion than the effects of a representational artist. The colors and materials used in Lavender Mist were consciously chosen and layered to achieve a particular effect.

You don't have to be an art critic to know that Jackson Pollock's true art form was not painting, but rather convincing people that he was an artist. Polock's "art" was typical of the stupid abstract expressionist movement--- intentionally devoid of representational content.

Of course Pollack's drip paintings are devoid of representational content.

There are entire cultures whose art is a mastery of abstraction. There are also perfectly intelligible reasons why a Titian can set a modern audience off into gales of laughter.

"Being old I remember the time when Microsoft were this great company who liberated the computing world from the Unix wars"

I can remember going from VAX/VMS and Apples to Win3.11 and Novell, then to WinNT, each progression being worse than the one before. In terms of usability it's total stagnation.

There was Osborne computers, Eagle computers, Atari, Columbia Data Products the one that managed to clone the IBM BIOS, that allowed the rest to mass market clones, that ultimatly ended up running WinDOS exclusively. Doesn't anyone find such a market a little strange. The 'poor unfortunate victims' are us who spent years getting payed peanuts to fix bills crappy OS.

major league base ball umpires union does not like systems like this and systems like that are not 100% also there stuff that is hard to make calls that can be 100% done by a bot.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E6DE1F39F933A15754C0A9649C8B63

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E1D61130F933A1575AC0A9649C8B63

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_24_227/ai_103378465

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuesTec

major league base ball umpires union does not like systems like this and systems like that are not 100% also there stuff that is hard to make calls that can be 100% done by a bot.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E6DE1F39F933A15754C0A9649C8B63

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E1D61130F933A1575AC0A9649C8B63

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_24_227/ai_103378465

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuesTec

"The Times does not say that the EU is going to hand over private information to US authorities"

My understanding of it is: that the US is going to monitor all activity on it's residents and will hand such information over to the US, without warrant or evidence of criminal or 'terrorist' activity. And we can't even sue you guys if you lose the data. Given the lack of controls over governmental abuse in your country, shouldn't we be monitoring you. And just because you guys want to turn this place into the front line against 'terrorism' doesn't necessarily mean that we want to go along with it. The text of the article:

"The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement .. to obtain private information -- like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits -- about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean."

"the two sides are still at odds on several other matters, including whether European citizens should be able to sue the United States government over its handling of their personal data, the report said"

'the two sides have agreed that information that reveals race, religion, political opinion, health or "sexual life" may not be used by a government "unless domestic law provides appropriate safeguards."'

Not saying that it is not needed, I am sure the "rest of the world" outside of the US and the EU would like some IP space all of their own, but market forces have already relegated that individuals have no need for unique IP space and NAT is good enough for the unwashed masses.

NAT is only good for networks. Every ISP subscriber still gets a unique IP, and with people leaving their PC's on 24/7, those might as well be unique IP's (my ISP does not charge that much extra to get a fixed IP).

I read a statistic that by 2010 half of the global population is going to have a cell phone (currently it's 4 out of 10), with most of the growth in asia and the middle east. Currently 1 in 6 cellphone users globally has an internet-enabled subscription (even if they don't use it), but this is going to grow considerably. We could be talking about up to a billion new internet users over the next decade, in asia and the middle east, the majority of them on cheap mobile devices. NAT is not going to be the answer, and IPv6 will become a necessity to reach those markets.

The NYT did an interesting article about cellphones and the third world. What's driving the adoption is economic necessity. The cost of doing business in a globalized world is that you have to be connected. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html

The NY Times' environmental blogger has a bit of an analysis of this including a great animation of sea ice growth and melt from 1980 to 2007.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/whats-really-up-with-north-pole-sea-ice/index.html

From my read of his post, it sounds like the Independent may have over-stated its case and mis-represented the words of the experts they interviewed. Which isn't to say things aren't bad...