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>You are correct. The FISA court hasn't said that domestic spying without a warrant is legal. Of course, they haven't said it's ILLEGAL either

It is illegal under the original FISA law, the very thing that created those courts.

>As a matter of fact, the FISA court hasn't made any statements on the NSA program simply because it is NOT WITHIN THIER JURISDICTION. Why? Because the NSA Program is NOT domestic spying!

And you know this how? Does president Bush call you up and reassure you that it isn't?

>It is spying on enemy combatants attempting to communicate with thier agents inside our borders during a declared time of war.

First, there has been no congressional declaration of war since World War 2. We are not at war unless congress says so, and they haven't.

See:
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/germwar.html
and
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/japwar.html

Notice especially the words "declare" and "war". They are important. No such declaration has been made about the Iraq conflict.

Second, you have no idea who they are really spying on because there has been zero oversight of their KGB like activities. (side note: KGB translates into 'Committee for State Security'. DOes that name remind anyone of a recently created department in the US?)

>Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, emphasized when FISA passed that the law "does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution."

The president doesn't have the power to disregard the parts of the constitution he doesn't like. If he can't work within the laws, he's nothing but a criminal.

>You are correct. The FISA court hasn't said that domestic spying without a warrant is legal. Of course, they haven't said it's ILLEGAL either

It is illegal under the original FISA law, the very thing that created those courts.

>As a matter of fact, the FISA court hasn't made any statements on the NSA program simply because it is NOT WITHIN THIER JURISDICTION. Why? Because the NSA Program is NOT domestic spying!

And you know this how? Does president Bush call you up and reassure you that it isn't?

>It is spying on enemy combatants attempting to communicate with thier agents inside our borders during a declared time of war.

First, there has been no congressional declaration of war since World War 2. We are not at war unless congress says so, and they haven't.

See:
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/germwar.html
and
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/japwar.html

Notice especially the words "declare" and "war". They are important. No such declaration has been made about the Iraq conflict.

Second, you have no idea who they are really spying on because there has been zero oversight of their KGB like activities. (side note: KGB translates into 'Committee for State Security'. DOes that name remind anyone of a recently created department in the US?)

>Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, emphasized when FISA passed that the law "does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution."

The president doesn't have the power to disregard the parts of the constitution he doesn't like. If he can't work within the laws, he's nothing but a criminal.

Nope, I am with yah, that makes three of us. Former President Jimmy Carter is actually the third.

The other 99% of the people out there don't have a clue what a scientific argument is. The two sides haven't even set down a foundation for their points of view. The discussion turns ugly so fast that the two sides aren't even arguing about the same thing.

Its called a citizens arrest and in most states it is quite legal and depending on what state you live in it is your legal obligation to arrest that neighbor.

http://www.constitution.org/grossack/arrest.htm
http://www.ou.edu/oupd/selfarr2.htm

It is a relatively modern Idea that Freedom is equal to Privacy. While the truth they are rather disjunct concepts. You still have the right of free speech you can still say whatever you want and just as long as it doesn't cause direct harm, (Like yelling Fire in a crowded room) you have the right to say it.
But just recently the right of privacy seems to be implicit to your freedom of speech. With freedom of speech (At least the American ideal) you should be able to state your views without getting arrested for it. But it doesn't state that you can say it without anyone knowing that you said it.

False.

You should revisit American history around the time of the American Revolution. The Federalist Papers were written under a pen name by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Hoping you have heard of at least one of those.

The pamlets supporting the idea of breaking away from Britian were written under pen names to protect the lives of the authors. The idea of anonymous speech dates back to the birth of the USA. The US Supreme Court has upheld that anonymous speech is a corner stone of free speech. Without anonymous speech, one does *not* have free speech.

You should read at least Amendment 9 of the Bill of Rights.

I think asking the maintainer of Archie to remove popular films from searches would be closer.

As others have pointed out, 88 is 'four-twenty-eight'. If, however, you say it in the equivalent English, as 'four score and eight', it suddenly doesn't sound quite so alien. The Gettysburg Address begins: 'Fourscore and seven years ago ...'

The really convoluted ones in French are the seventies and nineties:
74 = 'soixante-quatorze' (sixty-fourteen)
99 = 'quatre-vingt-dix-neuf' (four-twenty-ten-nine)

However, it's far simpler in Belgian French: they still use the old French words for seventy and ninety:
74 = 'septante-quatre' (seventy-four)
99 = 'nonante-neuf' (ninety-nine)

The vigesimal system in Europe is believed to have come either from the Basques or from the Normans.

I would advise Mr. Noel that the "green" is definitely not from Cerenkov radiation. I refer him to this, which explains how the sky's blue color is not due to Cerenkov emission (which peaks in the blue-UV region). Cerenkov is very well understood. If Mr. Noel feels strongly that the "green" arises from New Physics, then it cannot be Cerenkov, a phenomenon explained by classical electromagnetism.

He may also find this green thunderstorm investigation of interest.

A few influential people may disagree with your assertion.

"The Federalist Papers were a series of articles written under the pen name of Publius by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. "

http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/federalist/

While no right to anonymous speech is spelled out in the Constitution or its Amendments, I would imagine that the founding fathers thought that anonymity was trivially implied by "[not] abridging the freedom of speech", since a law requiring "eunymity" of unpopular political speech effectively bans that speech. (Think Communist speech in the McCarthy era. Regardless of where one stands on the idea itself, Communist speech is protected by the First Amendment.)

The Founders themselves made heavy use of the anonymous pen name Publius when writing The Federalist Papers -- essentially an ad campaign for our current Constitution -- so it's easy to see where they stood on the subject when they wrote the Constitution.

http://geophysics.ou.edu/impacts/dinos.gif

I'm sure that's what you were referring to. Good stuff.

You can't have meaningful, productive free speech with perfect anonymity, because there's no accountibility possible in that scenario.

I guess the Federalist Papers weren't very meaningful or productive.

Interesting, but wrong. Perhaps someone forgot to tell the Federal Courts and the ACLU it is all constitutional. Several parts of the Patriot Act have been struck down now. The first challenge to make it through the court system that was successful and can be found here. There are several more challenges in the works and there have been at least two (counting the one I linked to) that have been successful. It takes a long time for these things to be fettered out. Just because the law was passed, doesn't make it right or constitutional, such as was the case in the Sedition Act of 1798. That made it illegal to even 'utter' a word that could be construed as dissident against the United states or it's representatives. Thankfully that too was later found as unconstitutional and repealed.

"You are guaranteed the freedom to speak freely, no one ever mentioned that there would not be consequences to what you have to say"

This country is not free of repressive legislation either. The Sedition Act of 1798 made it illegal to write or even utter a word about anything that could be construed as defamitory against the United States Government. Imprisonment and deportation were the favored consequence of violating the law at the time. Thankfully that law was stricken from the books by Thomas Jefferson, when he became president. The fight to keep such laws from our books is never over however. Such laws seem to make their way into our law books with some twisted language from time to time, the latest of which is the Patriot Act.

1. FTP is a generic file transfer protocol. KaZaa is an application that allows searching for music (and movies? I'm not really familiar with it) and subsequently downloading it. So we can say KaZaa specializes in providing access to music (and movies?), whereas FTP doesn't specialize in any sort of file in particular.

KaZaa is an application that is designed to index a collection of files (perhpas even ID3 tags) and publish that list of files in a searchable database. How is this different from archie and veronica
very easy rodent-oriented net-wide index of computerized archives.. How is this different from yahoo, google, and other search engines?

2. KaZaa was programmed in a time when the connection between peer-to-peer and copyright infringement was well-established. It is very unlikely that the authors weren't aware of that fact. Thus, the authors of KaZaa probably knew that their software would be used for copyright infringement.

So would Firefox be more accountable than Netscape or Mosiac because it came later for any copyright infringement that goes on the WWW.

3. The files accessed through KaZaa come from other users of the system. There are many of those. Files accessed through FTP come from a few servers. FTP server admins have been known to take down offending material when made aware of its existance. The hopes of something similar happening to offending material shared by KaZaa users is futile. The only way to prevent rampant copyright infringement would be through the software.

There is nothing stopping anyone from hosting a FTP site on their own host machine. Or even http sever. Heck HTTP is even worse because if you have copyrighted materials in a directory designated no robots you run the risk of having your files indexed and accessable by anyone on the planet.

4. Although the authors were aware (if not before writing it, then certainly after release) that their software was used for rampant copyright infringement, and despite the fact that they are the only ones who can do something about it, they have not taken any steps to prevent the abuse.

There is presently no sutable system to establish the wish of the copyright holder. There is no centralized database offered by the RIAA nor MPAA that lists material that sharing is not permited. Given that many artists and peformers are pro-p2p and absolutly no way presently to establish the wish of a given artest, who's responciblity is it?

Take porno for instance. You can use KaZaa's network to download porno, much of it in 5, 10, or 20meg little bipverts that usually involve a cum-shot facial deal with a url in bold friendly letters. These free vids serve to prmote services that typicaly offer full lenth videos that you can download off their respective sites. This is a legit application of p2p networks.

If the RIAA wants to protect musician's rights, they have to create a centralized database that clearly list the copyright holder's wish on how they want music distributed. This is the only way to protect the rights of those who don't want to use P2P networks and those who expressly desire it. This is their job.

Does that make them guilty? Perhaps; time will tell. Does finding them guilty imply that the authors of the FTP protocol are guilty? I don't think so. FTP clearly wasn't originally envisioned to be used for rampant copyright infringement

So, are you saying if Kazza employed FTP protocal rather than it's own crappy protocal then they would be less guilty? Anonymous FTP was established without thought it might be used for piracy? This is respectfully a laugh. What about Ward Christian Protocal aka X-modem in the 1980s? How about Kermit, Y-modem or Z-modem. You can believe that these were written without thinking they might be used for copyright infringement... but you would be deluding yourself.

So why is everyone so upset ? The stupid people who counterfit money will give away the printer model they used, not a big deal.

The Federalists maybe: The Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison didn't want the British government to know who was writing them.

I can see where I might want to remain anonymous in a letter to my congress critter accusing him of being brain dead. I'm not advocating anonymous threats, just private dissent.

Enjoy,

Try this one instead:

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

-- Patrick Henry

http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/henry.html

The dereanged idea that it has to have meaning, relevance, etc., or it is worthless is ruining schools.

alternative learning styles, etc., are ruining basic instruction.

(by the way, I have an MA in Ed. Technology)

One almost wants to say "revolution," but then that would make you the "T" word wouldn't it?

Could be, but what happens when the "T" words nearly outnumber the regular Bob-fearing people, that go butter side down? Call them what you want, but I think that revolutionaries are only called terrorists if they lose, by those who stand to lose power by them.

Give me liberty or give me death - anonymous Terrorist suicide bomber, 1775.

Democracy is just mob rule. Obviously suggesting that we should replace it with a dictatorship is a step backwards, but are there any steps forward?

I agree, though I would broaden your definition of "education" to include soft sciences such as leadership / teaming skills, project management skills (I think management and leadership are two different concepts), and fundamental economics / business principles. I wrote an article about this in my college's magazine, Evolve. See page 26 of the PDF for the article (and a snazzy picture).

I'd also like to point out to those of you that are saying that the job market makes it pointless to pursue a degree that with these "soft" skills, its a little easier to find a good position that pays competetively. I had offers from several large and small corporations doing things toward the hardware side of software engineering.

Further, it *is* in each nation's interest to make sure it has the best technology and the most advanced science. In order to achieve these goals, the best minds are needed. I think the point is not just that we need people to get a jobs "doing software engineering" or "coding," but rather people who can advance the state-of-the-art in computer science or computer engineering, and discover what the next big thing might be.

~ Mike

(snipped from the PDF) ...
During the course of the internship, I realized just how much I was drawing from many of my experiences in the OU College of Engineering. From project management to presentation skills, all aspects of my education had prepared me to work on this project.
In senior capstone, for example, we learned how to work with a small, diverse team on a tight deadline. This past summer, my teammates and I did just that. In Gen. Jerry Holmes's leadership class, we talked about the traits of a good leader. This past summer, I saw those characteristics again and again in the managers and executives I met. In Dean Porter's colloquium, Technology's Role in the Wealth of Nations, we discussed engineering's impact on business and the economy. This past summer, we emphasized that impact while trying to sell our mentors on our ideas.
Many students may think that the important parts of their education consist entirely of classes within their discipline, whether it's computer engineering, industrial engineering or any other field. I learned firsthand that it isn't true. Courses like engineering leadership or the colloquium are just as vital to our engineering education as computer architecture in computer engineering or research methods in industrial engineering. As as a participant in the Extreme Blue internship program, I had the rare opportunity to meet and work with some of the top minds inside the company and have an impact on its business. There's no doubt my experience in the College of Engineering helped me turn it into a great success.

There's a software package called 'stress' that should fill your needs nicely.

http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/stress/

I use it at work for testing all of our servers. You have the option of testing CPU, Memory, IO, or VM, and it will most certainly put a heavy load on the server.

It may be sad that we live in a world where nuclear weapons research is driving the computing power, but it doesn't mean that the power of BlueGene/L isn't going to be used for thousands of other peaceful scientific applications, too.

You designate "appealing to authority" as fallacious. This is an alias for "appealing to misleading authority."

Theological arguments aside, the Christian Bible IS a misleading authority when applied legal argments in the US. The law of the land is based on the Constitution of the United States, not the Bible. This country is most emphatically NOT a theocracy.

The issue at hand is whether or not the Constitution's guarantees of equal protection under the law (14th amendment) and free practice of religion (1st amendment), are being violated by refusing to grant legal recognition to the enduring relationships maintained by one segment of the population. All you accomplish by bringing the Bible into the argument is acknowledge that the prohibition of all marriages other than Christian ones is an establishment of religion, and is therefore explicitly unconstitutional. Invoking religion automatically invalidates your argument from a Constitutional perspective.

The legitimate authorities on Constitutional law are the Constitution and it's amendments, the Federalist Papers, and Supreme Court rulings. Other writings of the framers of the Constitution (such as the private papers of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Hamilton; as well as preceding documents (such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence) are legitimate authorities in the specific instances where they illuminate the mindset and intentions of the Constitution's authors.

The only legitimate place where the Bible can enter a Constitutional law debate at all is in the instances where the Founding Fathers cite it as inspiration; however, all this does is place the Bible on equal footing with other inspriational sources, the most important of these being the writings of Enlightement philosophers such as Hobbes, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

I'd remind you that when the Framers mentioned "God", they were not talking about the God modern fundimentalist Christians worship. The architects of the Constitution were predominantly Deists and Enlightenment scholars, not Christians as a modern Fundimentalist would define it. Their God was "nature's God" (as Jefferson puts it in the Declaration of Independence); this God was viewed a celestial clockmaker who created the Universe and set it in motion, and did not interfere in it's operation thereafter. When they spoke of the "laws of God", they were talking about the laws of Science and Reason as they understood them, not a mass of primitive superstituious gobbledegook.

To dissect your claim that the Christian Bible is a legitimate authority in the Gay Marriage debate:

Is this a matter which I can decide without appeal to expert opinion? If the answer is "yes", then do so. If "no", go to the next question:

Moral issues are not easily decided given the limits of human understanding, so an appeal to authority is useful

Two probems here. First, this is a CONSTITUTIONAL LAW issue, not a MORAL issue. Second, even if it were a moral issue, moral issues ARE easily within the limits of human understanding.

The universal, rational basis of moral behavior is exceedingly simple: do no unnecessary harm to others. Everything else derives from this simple concept. Judeism and Christianity acknowledge this, in a roundabout way (the 10 commandments are mostly just a list of specific ways of harming others, and the Sermon at the Mount Jesus says the s

We're not at war. Only Congress can declare war, and they have not.

Just because the word "war" isn't used in the official congressional authorization, doesn't mean that Congress hasn't approved a state of war. Congress is free to use its power to make a state of war, declared or not, under Article I, Section 8, clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution in whatever way it sees fit, including conceding the ability to make war to the President under circumstances prescribed by specific laws passed by the same Congress that has this constitutional power.

May I bring to your attention HJR 114, that specifically authorizes the use of military force against Iraq.

Now, assuming you trust the Marriam-Webster definition for "war", in sense (1), HJR 114 certainly declares "a state ... of open and declared armed hostile conflict" between the United States and Iraq, and in sense (2) we are certainly in "a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism" as a result of the actions authorized by HJR 114 being taken.

Just because HJR 114 doesn't say "We Declare a State of War with Iraq" doesn't mean that the United States is not in a state of war with Iraq. It just hasn't been formalized into those words (which activate a sequence of other laws that are entirely unnecessary for our purposes in this conflict.) While HJR 114 does not declare war, and is rather specific on reporting and such as related to the War Powers Act, its overall effect isn't much different from this, except that "the full resources" of the United States and its people are not formally committed.

An interesting take on the "formal" declaration of war and its use (and possible obsolescence) can be found here. More reading material on the subject of war and who can declar it can be found here.

The prisoners held in Guantanamo are mostly "enemy combantants", and no "prisoners of war."

You're right, because as another astute Slashdot reader pointed out, there is a strong argument that those held at Guantanimo are not POWs under the Geneva convention. On the other hand, there are *actual* POWs being held in Iraq that do meet the definition.

You should arrive at something in the vicinity of 1400 W/m^2.

Federalist Papers
Anti-Federalist Papers

Have fun reading. This is what they meant.

• Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community REQUIRE TIME to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.

I recommend looking into the SINAPSE Project (http://www.sinapse.org). SINAPSE is a free, open-source student community tool (we like to call it a nexus, not a portal). It's written in PHP (on SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/sinapse), and it's a strict CMS system (no open editing - each app has controlled input and output). It's Developed at University of Oklahoma (go Sooners!) and run by students there.

You can see it in action at OU (The Sooner Information Network - http://sin.ou.edu), Baylor (Baylor Information Network - http://bin.baylor.edu), Purdue (HAIL - http://hail.purdue.edu), Southern Miss (The Varsity - http://thevarsity.usm.edu), California University of Pennsylvania (CalYou - http://calyou.cup.edu), SW OK State U (LIFE - http://life.swosu.edu), and Eastern VA Medical School (http://student.evms.edu)). There's also a similar site at William and Mary (SIN - http://sin.wm.edu) that's not running SINAPSE, but should be.

SINAPSE Consulting (http://www.sinapseconsulting.com) also makes some for-pay add-ons like LegiSlate which allows SGA's to do their Legislative processes online (voting, tracking, attendance, etc.) It's in action at OU (http://congress.ou.edu), OK State (http://www.osusga.com), Central Arkansas (http://uca.mysga.com), and very soon at Rhode Island, Illinois Institute of Tech, and U Texas - Arlington (and possibly Miami).

I recommend looking into the SINAPSE Project (http://www.sinapse.org). SINAPSE is a free, open-source student community tool (we like to call it a nexus, not a portal). It's written in PHP (on SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/sinapse), and it's a strict CMS system (no open editing - each app has controlled input and output). It's Developed at University of Oklahoma (go Sooners!) and run by students there.

You can see it in action at OU (The Sooner Information Network - http://sin.ou.edu), Baylor (Baylor Information Network - http://bin.baylor.edu), Purdue (HAIL - http://hail.purdue.edu), Southern Miss (The Varsity - http://thevarsity.usm.edu), California University of Pennsylvania (CalYou - http://calyou.cup.edu), SW OK State U (LIFE - http://life.swosu.edu), and Eastern VA Medical School (http://student.evms.edu)). There's also a similar site at William and Mary (SIN - http://sin.wm.edu) that's not running SINAPSE, but should be.

SINAPSE Consulting (http://www.sinapseconsulting.com) also makes some for-pay add-ons like LegiSlate which allows SGA's to do their Legislative processes online (voting, tracking, attendance, etc.) It's in action at OU (http://congress.ou.edu), OK State (http://www.osusga.com), Central Arkansas (http://uca.mysga.com), and very soon at Rhode Island, Illinois Institute of Tech, and U Texas - Arlington (and possibly Miami).

While he makes the point that the Founding Fathers probably had in their minds flintlocks (and sabers, cannon, horse-cavalry) when they were thinking of the arms that the people might keep and bear, at the same time their view of the press was those with manual printing presses, paper and quill-pens, not radio, TV, high-speed automatic presses and the internet. (Remember that any successful argument limiting the scope of one article of the Bill of Rights can immediately be used in the same form against another... precedent can be a bitch.)

I would point out that the intention of the Founding Fathers was that the militia, both organized and unorganized, be equipped with such weapons as are customary for the time. (For those who won't RTFLink, the militia is every able bodied male from 17 to 45 that is a citizen or has declared their intention to become one, plus any female that have joined an organized militia, state or national. Religious conscientious objectors are excused from combat duty, and may be assigned noncombatant roles. Still on the books and in effect... if you're American and male, you're a militiaman.) In order to avoid having an standing army in peace-time, the militia would be relied upon to handle defence against an aggressor until an army could be raised. Furthermore, in order that the standing army not be used as an instrument of oppression after it is raised, the militia would be armed alike to the standing army. Indeed, a few years after the Constitution was established, the Militia Act of 1792 was established requiring all men that could afford it to procure a musket, bayonet, shot, powder and associated gear (i.e. the "assault weapons" of the time). Sunday mornings were spent in worship, exercising their hard earned rights; Sunday afternoon were spent at the local firing range, practicing in order to defend those rights.

I think it is clear that the intention of the Founding Fathers was very clear: if the military can have it, the people can have it. It does not, however, follow that the government shall provide it to any individual of the people. Domestic builders of tanks are under contract with clauses to provide them only to the government, so you'll have to build your own, and you can't import them. Want hacking tools? Well, the military doesn't have to give you theirs, but you can write your own.

So the question posed by arashiakari is interesting: if the government is to classify something as an "arm", then they may not infringe the right of the people to keep and "bear" it, even if it is a Perl script, but they don't have to make it easy to acquire. Which does not mean that you can export it, which is where I think the source of the question came from (i.e. the prohibition on the export of cryptographic devices under their classification as a "munition").

When one is unclear as to the intention of the Founding Fathers, the Internet can bring you some of their insight in the form of the Federalist Papers, thanks to Project Gutenberg.

First of all we are NOT a DEMOCRACY. We are a republic, and yes I am against democracy, just as the founding fathers were. Go read the federalist papers and see just what the founding fathers invisioned. http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/federalist/

What the founders planned aside, when the "law of the land" cannot be changed for fear of violating these expressed principles, it means that you need to consider more closely either the proposed law, or the principles. And indeed, as is healthy, we regularly consider these principles with reguard to the laws... but seldom find a need to change our expressed principles. (After all, they've survived over 220 years of discussion and debate.) And as this country grows from an adolescent to an adult in the family of nations, I would hope that it has fairly well developed its principles by this time, and would not change them as casually as it does it's mood.

Yes, we do need to recognize that these founders were men of their times, and their plan was not perfect. Merely because an idea is not consistent with their plan need not be the idea's final bane. On the other hand, it was and is a good plan overall. Furthermore, they worked out a set of political compromises that has mostly lasted for over 200 years (leaving aside one virgorous attempt after about 80 years). Most of our current lawmakers would count themselves lucky if anything they propose lasts half so long half so well, and most are suitably humble towards the efforts of those who wrought so well, realizing they while they might be at least in the equal to Jonathan Dayton, few can hope to equal of Madison, Franklin, Washington, nor Hamilton... and even less hope to equal alone what these men achieved combined.

The problem your random new idea faces is that, when considering the new idea, you weigh the wisdom of the new idea against more than 200 years of demonstrated overall wisdom of the plan. This is a Good Thing.

John Stossel did a documentary of it, for one. Or read the Mayflower Compact. Good ol' Rush Limbaugh relates the same story. The primary source for all of them is William Bradford's own On Plymouth Plantation.

Or, you could simly have googled it yourself.

The opposite of progress is congress.

The opposite of Congress is tyranny.

Read the Federalist Papers and see why this is true.

Shit on representative democracy long enough and you won't have it.

Sadly in the America of 2004, it does. A lot of Americans seem to have a completely skewed view of what the word really means. It's no longer about being able to say what you want or think what you want, it's about being able to buy what you want when you want it.

We are all taught about Washington chopping down cherry trees, but precious little about Patrick Henry.

In two weeks I will earn the first part of an accelerated Masters degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering from The University of Oklahoma.

I would recommend something similar, instead of the pure CS route, personally. I may be getting a EE degree, but my Masters Thesis will be the design of a software application.

As for my employment opportunities, while I'm waiting for the Fall semester to start, a very large company in the IT Hardware / Software design field has hired me for a summer job that pays 25 dollars and change per hour, with overtime, which works out to be a little over $50,000 per year. After graduation from OU, it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll join that company in a system-level engineering role.

Maybe it's just me, but I've had a VERY easy time finding a job with that combination of hardware and software engineering skills.

Now, I'm not sure what "CET" stands for, but I sincerely hope it's not some sort of tradesman degree. Engineering, or rather system design and implementation, is where the money is, because this is where the difficult problems are solved. I'm going to guess that "T" might stand for "Technology" or something similar -- in that case, you might just as well stick with your normal Bachelor's of Science classes and go get a 2-year degree from ITT Tech, and watch it become obsolete in 5 years.

With engineering, you might (depending on the quality of your school) learn about the underlying principles of a given problem, and how to apply certain solution methods and thought processes to different situations. This, I think, is the most valuable part of the degree. With these skills, you can keep up with the pace of the technology, so when the new PCI standard, for example, comes out, you can bring yourself up to speed on how it works, rather than clinging to what's currently out there.

I hope this made some sense to you. This was posted anonymously to protect the identity of my employer.

Actually, there is a fairly universal concept of "right" and "wrong" with respect to human society.

Of course there is a universal concept of "right" and "wrong". The real question is what is part of this concept?
Mankind has lived without a 'Magna Charta' for thousands of years and it remains to be proven that our specific moral viewpoint is better than others. If there is an universal truth, it has to be true for everyone at any time. But more often than not, 'universal truth' is just an instrument to impose opinions on other people.

In Action

Design schematics

Early Mock-up of Version 2

Better School

BTW, for those reminiscing about text-based gopher don't forget GopherVR that came out just as http/html hit. An interesting experiment in 3D virtualization of online resources I've yet to see it equalled for other protocols.

Other now-obscure technologies from the same era:

• ph
• fsp
• wais
• archie
• z39.50
• veronica
• prospero

For students such as yourself, my university (and others, possilby) offers a 5-year Masters degree in Computer Engineering, allowing the option of either a M.S. in Computer Science, or an M.S. in Electrical Engineering (VERY, VERY broad field).

Basically, you take graduate-level electives instead of "normal" electives in your undergraduate degree. You're allowed to double-count those graduate-level credits toward your MS.

Ask your potential schools about such programs, and think about getting a minor in C.S. or the like if you feel like programming is in your future. I have a B.S. Computer Engineering, Minor Computer Science, and will have an M.S. Electrical Engineering, all in 5 years of work (excluding summers, including about 24 hours of advanced placement credit). It's worth it, and I like having the option to say "I'm a hardware guy" OR "I'm a software guy" OR "I do both equally well" depending on the employer's needs.

• In a spectacular career spanning nearly six decades, Edgerton and his "magic lamps" stopped bullets mid-flight and revealed the secrets of ocean depths. By photographing the usual in an unusual way, Edgerton brought to the world what James R. Killian, Jr., coined "sudden wonder."
• Some more photos by Harold Edgerton
• bullet thru baloon
• diver entering water
• bullet thru card
• Pigeon Released
• hitting a tennis ball
• cards

I've got two tablets: a ProGear which I bought for $600 when the SonicBlew decided to clear inventory, and a Toshiba Poretege 3500. I can tell you that, primarily, the biggest problem with these tablets is a cruddy software interface. I assume you remember the first incarnation of Windows CE, and how much of the interface was a lift of the Windows 95 GUI. Tablet XP is the same way. While the underlying components are all there, they are implemented to allow quick transition from XP to XP Tablet. The interface on these devices should be more along the lines of CE's CURRENT design, which presents much more information on a single screen, with a much more streamlined (read specialized) human-computer interface.

I'm developing software for the Toshiba, but have had a chance to use it for classwork (I'm a Senior in Electrical and Computer Engineering at OU), and I can seriously say that for people like me that take a lot of notes (read digital packrats), tablets have lots of potential. I can search my handwriting for specific keywords, or "print" a document to the Journal and mark it up, which is a great feature for professors that provide notes to follow along with in class. While everyone else is scribbling madly to keep up, I just pick the "highlighter" and highlight the notes, and maybe make some of my own in the side margin.

As far as the form factor goes, they're getting smaller, and lighter. Look at Acer's TravelMate, for example.

Also, what some people fail to realize is that there are two distinct types of tablets. All of the ones I've highlighted, with the exception of the ProGear are "convertible" machines. A second (cheaper) form factor is also out there, the "slate" machines. Check out a great overview at TheTabletPC.Net.

As they say with many other things, don't knock it 'til you try it.

Mike Hollinger

Check out Oklahoma's Mesonet. There are over 110 automated stations in 77 counties, sending essentially real-time data back (10-20 min delay for some things). Everything from your usual temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure, to things like soil moisture and temperature. Fairly nifty stuff.

This is already being done, at the moment not all states participating have made the data accessible. Here are a few that have.

Oklahome Mesonet

West Texas Mesonet

MesoWest

Note: The Texas Mesonets are particularly interesting during landfall of tropical cyclones!

Ohh, let's!

Gates Foundation - Charity or Strategy?
Microsoft Marketing Brings New Business and New Skeptics
Microsoft Donates "State of the Art" NT Systems To Mac Stalwart, Dartmouth
Defying a Microsoft World View
Special Report: MS Settlement under fire
COMMENTARY ISSUED ON OPEN SOURCE AND THE MICROSOFT DONATION IN SA
Your taxes are paying for the pricing practices of a proprietary monopoly.

I hate to break it to you, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn't Microsoft. They are completely different entities.

And a change of pace:
SuSE Linux Donates Software to Allentown, Pennsylvania Schoolchildren

This invention was created at the University of Tulsa, a private institution. There is a University of Oklahoma at Tulsa, but that's a different entity, part of the state university system.

The situation is much the same in my current hometown, where we have a University of Denver (private) and a University of Colorado-Denver (public).

Cowboys never lived in tents, I'd venture to guess 1/3 to 1/2 of the state has rode a horse at least once, I see a covered wagon at every home game (OU), and I'm proud to be an Oklahoman.

BTW Tulsa is going to shit (1/2 my family lives there, the housing market is crap, the job market is crap, and the people are republicans (which are made from crap)).

water boatmen are not water striders

Suchetha