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" Whoever modded you up is equally idiotic."

and you're an idiot for trusting a fake wiki like "wikia.com"

wikipedia.org:
"Because much of the court's ruling was based on the original licensing agreement between Apple and Microsoft for Windows 1.0, it made the case more of a contractual matter than of copyright law, to the chagrin of Apple. This also meant that the court avoided a more far-reaching "look and feel copyright" precedent ruling. However, the case did establish that the analytic dissection (rather than the general "look and feel") of a user interface is vital to any copyright decision on such matters. In 1997, five years after the lawsuit was decided, all lingering infringement questions against Microsoft regarding the Lisa and Macintosh GUI as well as Apple's "QuickTime piracy" lawsuit against Microsoft were settled in direct negotiations. Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer their default browser, to the detriment of Netscape. Microsoft agreed to continue developing Microsoft Office and other software for the Mac over the next five years. Microsoft also purchased $150 million of non-voting Apple stock, helping Apple in its financial struggles at the time. Both parties entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement."

See the "Microsoft also purchased"? Wasn't really part of the lawsuit, it just "also" happened in 1997 "helping Apple in its financial struggles at the time". Apple was a sinking ship and Microsoft rescued them.

What's wrong with Microsoft helping Apple? Why can't anyone just admit what really happened? The news confirms it.

College, Inc..

Yours In Moscow,
Kilgore Trout

"In all fairness, most football programs MAKE money for the University."

Not for the university, no. Football funds generally go to the athletic department, which still runs at an overall loss to the university. This is according to the NCAA.

Those funds are typically used to support the rest of a university's athletic department budget. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most departments operate at a yearly multimillion-dollar deficit. [PBS Nightly Business Report: The Business of College Football, Part 1]

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/071112c/

"I really doubt you can find them because that's all complete bullshit. MS bought a small (150M, I think) as part of a settlement deal, to prevent Apple cleaning their clock in court - MS had been caught ripping off Apple's code and selling it as their own."

You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. Where were you in 1997? This was huge news.
MS BITES INTO APPLE
"During a year of corporate reshuffling and job cuts, Apple's stock has fallen more than 50 percent... For right now, though, a $150 million investment really does keep Apple going...$150 million gets Apple a little new lease on life."

Microsoft's gorilla knocks on Apple's door
"Apple's stock had been falling steadily over the years. Despite occasional surges, the stock kept sliding down. Apple was losing the confidence of investors..... So Steve Jobs turned to Bill Gates, the $36 billion man....Jobs asked Gates to pledge $150 million in purchases of Apple stock. Gates agreed, but only after getting the deal on sharing trade secrets and the agreement that Apple would promote the Microsoft Web browser.... The $150 million in pledges....gave Apple stock a sudden boost, from a low of $13.68 a share in early July to a high of $26.31 a share (in August)"

Here let me break it down for you:
Jobs: Oh mighty Gates! A poor beggar I be! My company is failing, please won't thou shine ye mighty billions down onto my brow!
Gates: I hear you poor beggar Jobs. I shall grant you $150 million if you agree that all your base are belong to us.
Jobs: Oh bless you all powerful and mighty Gates! Bless you!!

This happened in 1997, a year before the announcement of the iMac, so it's safe to say without Microsoft there would be no iMac, iPod, iPhone or iPad

Perhaps it is not legal to assist suicide, but it is legal to buy a one-way ticket to a country where assisted suicide is legal. (Or put it on your credit card :) There was a frontline on this. As it so happens the person in question also had ALS.

Millions of years ago, a warmer climate might have been a good thing overall. But warmer temperatures and rising sea level in the 21st century will cost trillions of dollars.

...is mind-boggingly awesome.

Actually you can often make a simple assumption and work off of F = m*a or some other well established theorem...

As for the math, now that is some pretty mind boggling stuff. Some of the math that was used to pull string theory together is pretty bleeding edge on top of the physics part of it. PBS had a interesting show on string theory(you can watch in three installments on PBS). What struck me the most was how splintered the physics community was as many researches were doing the math a certain way different from each other, but it was found to be all the same by another physics/math guru when he proposed 11 dimensions instead of 9 like the other researches had inferred.

I kind of felt like Lessig got beat up a little bit on Bill Moyers Journal when he debated Nick Gillespie on the Citizen's United campaign finance case. Gillespie was skillful enough to make the pro-corporate-money position seem...well...reasonable. And Lessig seemed ill at ease with the whole thing. I don't know if anybody "won" that debate, but Lessig definitely didn't win - which is surprising since he was clearly arguing from the high ground. It was actually a little scary to watch how deftly Gillespie dispatched all Lessig's jousts about corporate money in campaigns. If somebody at ASCAP has skills like Gillespie's, they might not have that much to worry about. More props to Lessig, despite all that, for wanting to keep these debates in a public forum.

Link at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/profile.html

A US public radio show just ran a whole feature on Web 2.0 content farming. Wired also ran this piece on one of the main polluters, Demand Media, a while back, explaining how it uses algorithmically driven keyword generators that grab "hot" (ie, adclick revenue-generating) trends from, among others, source such as Google Trends, then farms out a skeleton of an article with the required keywords to an extremely poorly paid human whose job it is to string together acceptably human-readable inter-keyword verbiage to flesh out an "article".

There is a good PBS documentary about this online. It is called "College Inc." Here is the link. http://video.pbs.org/video/1485280975/ Here is a quote from made by Mark DeFusco, University of Phoenix Dir from 1994 thru 2002: "If you take a look at for-profit colleges, the analysts will tell you that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the total revenue of a company is in sales and marketing, about a quarter. In most cases, the faculty are in the 10 to 20 percent range." He rationalizes it by saying this: "When I go and buy perfume for my mom, the chemicals in the bottle and the bottle itself amount to about $0.50. The advertising amounts to five or six bucks." This might explain why the quality of teachers might not be that great. And they tend to advertise on high traffic sites like Yahoo Mail or MSN.com to name a couple. You all seen those add that tell moms that "Obama wants you to go back to school." It is very sad how this companies take advantage of the Government, thru student aid, and people in need. They are so quick to sign somebody up for a loan that they won't be able to pay.

A great deal of this excellent documentary mirrors what you've said, and is pretty scathing to University of Phoenix. The worst part is, folks take out huge student loans to pay for these worthless degrees from for-profit schools, can never afford to pay them back, and can never get out from under the loans because you can't discharge them in bankruptcy (because said loans are backed by the federal government).

To be fair, there is a difference between serious, accredited universities and paper mills. If he's enrolled in one of the schools profiled in the Frontline documentary below, then he may simply be getting ripped off.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist

It's pretty sad since these folks really are trying to better themselves.

It was a case in Dover, PA.

The "Intelligent Design" folks had their collective asses kicked.

heya,

Your first point, I'm not going to argue on, because I don't know of the cases you're referring to. I assume here you mean recent ones? Perhaps you could cite examples.

Your second point - it is actually quite cheap, if you look at the whole picture, both the initial outlay and the ongoing cost. And it is relatively clean - the public likes to drum up the fears about nuclear waste, but the actual amount of waste is considerably less than that from the coal industry. A few pounds of nuclear material is enough to power a small city for a year. You compare that to the amount of coal you have to burn, and hundreds of metric tonnes of resulting pollution.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

And assuming you find safe ways of getting it out of the way, it doesn't pollute the air and contribute to lung cancer. France themselves are leading pioneering research in recycling/reprocessing their nuclear waste. In the US, I believe there's a moratorium on reprocessing dating from the Carter Era, over fears that widespread proliferation of such technology might make it easy for terrorists to get nuclear weapons.

Your third point - that's the current situation. Isn't the whole point of this article to try and look as possibly increasing that percentage?

Fourth - as mentioned above, there's a massive outlay, obviously. It's not like you're just digging up rocks from the ground and burning them in a giant pit. And also, I think you're being a bit disingenious and selective with the facts here - the government also funds the coal industry...lol....and to a much larger amount. E.g. see this earlier story, when they were up in arms, when the Congress-funded U.S. Export-Import Bank denied them several hundred million dollars in loan guarantees:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/27/obamas-promise-to-bankrupt-coal-industry-to-cost-1000-jobs-in-upper-midwest/
http://blogsforvictory.com/2010/06/27/obamunism-coal-industry-jobs-lost-because-of-obama-policy/

(Yes, I've noticed both of those blogs seem to be pro-coal, or pro-global warming, if that makes sense...haha).

Cheers,
Victor

I remember watching a NerdTV interview with Andy Hertzfeld which made mention of MacPaint. Now I've done a search, I've found the transcript of Andy's interview on the web. I'll quote the section I was thinking of:

[...] an older guy got up and said he thought MacPaint was probably the best program ever written. Was it possible for him to see the source code? It turns out the person asking the question was Don Knuth [...]

Sounds like Bill Atkinson can cite you and Knuth as fans :)

I remember watching a NerdTV interview with Andy Hertzfeld which made mention of MacPaint. Now I've done a search, I've found the transcript of Andy's interview on the web. I'll quote the section I was thinking of:

[...] an older guy got up and said he thought MacPaint was probably the best program ever written. Was it possible for him to see the source code? It turns out the person asking the question was Don Knuth [...]

Sounds like Bill Atkinson can cite you and Knuth as fans :)

If sea level rises by three feet, it will wipe out the current beachfront of Miami. Rising sea level isn't just an inconvenience, even in the U.S. We'll need to spend trillions of dollars to stop the incoming sea or move infrastructure inland. It's not a matter of a Miami millionaire moving his yacht pier up three feet. All his beachfront property will be a loss.

How can we judge the success of these programs, when much of it will never be known by the general public?

I thought the effectiveness of intelligence and homeland security spending were periodically reported on and covered by the GAO? Then you'd get congressional hearings on bad years and large contracts like the FBI's Virtual Case File System (complete failure)?

Seems to be a lot of hype. Yeah, we know the contractors soak up a lot of your tax dollars. Yeah, I know you can use black and white footage to make it look evil and interview your own reporters to sell newspapers and ads. You might be correct saying that there has been too much spending since 9/11 on this stuff but how does revealing contracts and small businesses associated with the government help this situation?

Also, I'd like to point out that this appears to be a three part story running Mon-Tues-Wed with a PBS Frontline one hour special on it. Evidently, PBS and the WP think the little stuff you know about national security is going to aid you in your decision to determine whether or not your tax dollars are being appropriately spent. Good luck.

Frontline has a good essay on Carter's decision and the reasoning behind it. It was not a simplistic, stupid decision, it was reasonable based on the facts returned by the Nuclear Energy Policy Study Group, and it's hard to argue anything has changed since then. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/keeny.html

So you mean that UNSCOM really didn't destroy Iraq's calutrons. The question was how much was hidden? Looks like Sadam was stupid enough to not let the UNSCOM inspectors see that he complied, and was evasive enough that he ended up getting hung. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/photos/9.html

Let's assume that the sensors were logging the wrong data. That would require assuming that the NHSTA was too stupid to be able to figure that out.

While one should never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, one should also never assume stupidity over malice from a branch of our federal government. This is the same NHTSA that pushes federal crash test standards designed to promote the sale of big heavy expensive vehicles and disqualify small, fuel-efficient vehicles. And this is the same federal government that refuses to allow California to set its own emission standards:

"It's pre-empted by federal law," said Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a lobbying group which filed the suit. "It's something that needs to be done at the national or international level."

My asshole. It's government collusion that went on at the national level. I can easily believe in some more.

Well, average life-expectancy of a species is 5-million years. Homo Sapience has already doubled that putting us at the extreme end of the scale that gives this average.

How are you doing your math? The genetic evidence shows that Homo Sapiens can be traced back 200,000 years. Nowhere near the 5 million you are stating as an average for species longevity. If you are counting Australopithecus anamensis, that would get you back to 4 million years, but I would hardly consider it to be the same species as us.

Furthermore, the actual average longevity of a species is 1 million years, not 5 (as evidenced here. Just because 10 million years appears to be an extreme upper limit does not make the average 5 million.

I would draw a distinction between an cautious observer and a argument spewing movement.

There was (and sadly is) an anti-vax movement spreading FUD about vaccines. That FUD has caused real world deaths for no good reason. I know a number of mommies who are very cautious of vaccines now that I wouldn't say are anti-vaxxers. They've heard the FUD and have doubts. That is reasonable. Spreading the FUD is not.

What I have problems with are the people making the arguments for others to repeat who don't understand what genes are, what they do, how they are modified in GM, how traditional breeding works, and other important details.

The movement creates words like "frankenfood" and examples like fish tomatoes (which never made it out of the lab.) People with limited time and caring get a very one sided, bad perception. And we are rightly a risk intolerant species. If one thing has more risks then the other, we tend to avoid it. There are risks in both GM food and traditionally breed food, and people who understand GM the best are the least worried about it.

PBS has a decent site with varying points of view. It's probably the least biased piece I've seen on the issue yet.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/exist/arguments.html

I consider myself a green, but I'm not an anti-corporate luddite as the "green" movement has become. I'm not the only one who think so: Go ask Patrick Moore (Founder and former president ofGreepeace), Stewart Brand(Whole Earth Catalog, Long now Foundation), and other luminaries.

Older ways are not necessarily better. New is not always less safe then old. Food safety is an important issue, and I'd personally like to see the debate raise above the sound bytes level. That is my personal goal. GM is not bad, but some ways it can be used are bad. Some corporations are more likely to use it to self serving ends, and patent both their discoveries and the basic tools use d to make those discoveries. There are great benefits and potential problems with GM, and we need to move past the initial fear of the unknown stage. Unfortunately, most people are only hearing the FUD.

Wow, at first glance I thought you were kidding! You seem to have really meant that though! Hydrogen - Ever hear of the Hindenburg? Oh the humanity!

It has been theorized (I actually want to say shown/proven) that the hydrogen was not the problem, it was the paint on the skin. "Secrets of the Dead" on PBS discussed it: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e3-about.html

I think Mythbusters did too.

LMFAO

Super sekret plan to trick the Russians? Bullshit. Show some evidence outside your redneck survivalist conspiracy websites. The R7 derivatives kicked the arse of the Redstone and Vanguard rockets - and that is a historical fact I dare you to disprove.

LMFAO!

If only you understood how much of a fucking idiot you look like now!

The launch of Sputnik effectively ended those concerns by establishing a precedent that national boundaries did not extend into space.

In July 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an "Open Skies" policy whereby either nation would be allowed to fly reconnaissance aircraft over the other. He did that because they were nearing completion of their rocket which would be capable for orbital range and velocities.

Von Braun: I actually had the satellite in the trunk of my car; in 1957 Von Braun so was pissed by the order directly from Eisenhower to stop and mothball development, he continued development in secret but ALSO built the satellite despite presidential order to the contrary.

Tomorrow night PBS's NOVA will air Sputnik Declassified, which tells the story of how the U. S. could have beaten the Soviets into space, had it not been for military spy priorities that wanted the Soviets to, indeed, be first, thus establishing a precedent for our planned spy satellites that were very soon to map every Soviet ICBM launch site without fanfare or public pronouncement.

Vanguard was given the green light while Von Braun's project was mothballed by the president. Immediately after Vanguard's failure, Von Braun's project was removed from storage, prepped for launch, and launched. Their design worked right out of storage; having been placed there over a year before Sputnik's launch.

LMFAO! What a fucking idiot!!!! LOL!!!

Why are stupid people so fucking stupid they can't even bother to use something magical like a search engine - which is there EXACTLY for this fucking reason - to allow you to stop being so fucking stupid and lazy! What a fucking loser!

Now then, take your smug head out from your ass and think for but one second of your life. After the Russian's telling the US to piss off and that overflights would absolutely NOT be allowed, what would the world look like now had the US been the first to orbit? Absolutely NOTHING like the open sky policy the world currently enjoys today.

Basically, history, facts, people of high renown, and common sense all say you're a fucking idiot.

LMFAO

Super sekret plan to trick the Russians? Bullshit. Show some evidence outside your redneck survivalist conspiracy websites. The R7 derivatives kicked the arse of the Redstone and Vanguard rockets - and that is a historical fact I dare you to disprove.

LMFAO!

If only you understood how much of a fucking idiot you look like now!

The launch of Sputnik effectively ended those concerns by establishing a precedent that national boundaries did not extend into space.

In July 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an "Open Skies" policy whereby either nation would be allowed to fly reconnaissance aircraft over the other. He did that because they were nearing completion of their rocket which would be capable for orbital range and velocities.

Von Braun: I actually had the satellite in the trunk of my car; in 1957 Von Braun so was pissed by the order directly from Eisenhower to stop and mothball development, he continued development in secret but ALSO built the satellite despite presidential order to the contrary.

Tomorrow night PBS's NOVA will air Sputnik Declassified, which tells the story of how the U. S. could have beaten the Soviets into space, had it not been for military spy priorities that wanted the Soviets to, indeed, be first, thus establishing a precedent for our planned spy satellites that were very soon to map every Soviet ICBM launch site without fanfare or public pronouncement.

Vanguard was given the green light while Von Braun's project was mothballed by the president. Immediately after Vanguard's failure, Von Braun's project was removed from storage, prepped for launch, and launched. Their design worked right out of storage; having been placed there over a year before Sputnik's launch.

LMFAO! What a fucking idiot!!!! LOL!!!

Why are stupid people so fucking stupid they can't even bother to use something magical like a search engine - which is there EXACTLY for this fucking reason - to allow you to stop being so fucking stupid and lazy! What a fucking loser!

Now then, take your smug head out from your ass and think for but one second of your life. After the Russian's telling the US to piss off and that overflights would absolutely NOT be allowed, what would the world look like now had the US been the first to orbit? Absolutely NOTHING like the open sky policy the world currently enjoys today.

Basically, history, facts, people of high renown, and common sense all say you're a fucking idiot.

LMFAO

Super sekret plan to trick the Russians? Bullshit. Show some evidence outside your redneck survivalist conspiracy websites. The R7 derivatives kicked the arse of the Redstone and Vanguard rockets - and that is a historical fact I dare you to disprove.

LMFAO!

If only you understood how much of a fucking idiot you look like now!

The launch of Sputnik effectively ended those concerns by establishing a precedent that national boundaries did not extend into space.

In July 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an "Open Skies" policy whereby either nation would be allowed to fly reconnaissance aircraft over the other. He did that because they were nearing completion of their rocket which would be capable for orbital range and velocities.

Von Braun: I actually had the satellite in the trunk of my car; in 1957 Von Braun so was pissed by the order directly from Eisenhower to stop and mothball development, he continued development in secret but ALSO built the satellite despite presidential order to the contrary.

Tomorrow night PBS's NOVA will air Sputnik Declassified, which tells the story of how the U. S. could have beaten the Soviets into space, had it not been for military spy priorities that wanted the Soviets to, indeed, be first, thus establishing a precedent for our planned spy satellites that were very soon to map every Soviet ICBM launch site without fanfare or public pronouncement.

Vanguard was given the green light while Von Braun's project was mothballed by the president. Immediately after Vanguard's failure, Von Braun's project was removed from storage, prepped for launch, and launched. Their design worked right out of storage; having been placed there over a year before Sputnik's launch.

LMFAO! What a fucking idiot!!!! LOL!!!

Why are stupid people so fucking stupid they can't even bother to use something magical like a search engine - which is there EXACTLY for this fucking reason - to allow you to stop being so fucking stupid and lazy! What a fucking loser!

Now then, take your smug head out from your ass and think for but one second of your life. After the Russian's telling the US to piss off and that overflights would absolutely NOT be allowed, what would the world look like now had the US been the first to orbit? Absolutely NOTHING like the open sky policy the world currently enjoys today.

Basically, history, facts, people of high renown, and common sense all say you're a fucking idiot.

They used video of an attack on weapons-carrying insurgents (in an area where insurgents had been shooting at people all day)

No matter how many tymes I look and search I do not see those being shot at with any weapons. Not one. I doubt the children were armed either. And it's not like innocent civilians are never targeted. Mi Lai was a real massacre of villagers by the US military in Viet Nam and not staged. Abu Ghraib was also real. To ignore or deny atrocities perpetrated by those in the US military is to deny reality. Calling themselves Christians, when they are not, some in the military even take pride in saying "Kill them all, let God sort them out."

Falcon

Troll much?
The awards list alone should be enough to counter your argument that there is a comparable alternative.

Tax dollars account for less than %1 of the operating costs of PBS.
There are NO commercial alternatives for truly important investigative reporting such as FRONTLINE, no commercial childens programming comparable to Sesame Street, no commercial news broadcasts that are willing to do more than a sound bite on any topic other than the PBS World Report.

Actually, China seems to be doing a pretty good job of fixing poverty and hunger. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/06/reporters-notebook-obesity-rising-in-china.html
I'm not sure they are going about it right, but you can't say that they are as poor as they were 40 years ago.

If you are even remotely interested in the people behind the solving of the Theorem, you should watch this documentary about Andrew Wiles.

At the same time I am aware they [...] will play ball with the American government by folding faster than superman on laundry day.

Based on their past behavior I'd say you are wrong.

yep this was all in Gasland. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html

Here's the way regulation works. Private business tries something, people hate it. Customers can't get the companies to change their ways because all of the companies are doing it - there's no competitor to jump to. So now the government has to put a stop to it.

Write the bill and send it to your Congress critter.

It's quaint and charming when my friends tell me how writing a thoughtful letter to their elected representatives will accomplish something. Even intelligent people believe that.

Lobbyists know the system better than you or I ever will, they have contacts, but most of all they have money. They can contribute tens of millions of dollars to the Dem and Republican parties, and to individual candidates. That money can make the difference in paying for enough attack TV ads to bring a candidate over the top in a close race.

You, on the other hand, can send no more than a few letters, and if you're really charismatic you may be able to organize a dozen or a hundred of your friends to do the same. Meanwhile, you can't pay the millions of dollars for campaign costs which your elected official really needs.

There was a book that one a political science prize called "The Congressman," written by a former congressman turned political science professor, who said that the first priority for an elected official has to do is get re-elected. Otherwise they won't be an elected official any longer.

No matter how well-meaning, your congressman will either do whatever it takes to get re-elected, or he won't be a congressman. And it takes tens of millions of dollars.

Getting between a congressman and his millionaire contributors is like getting between a grizzly bear and her cub.

The example I understand best is health care reform.

According to the polls, the American public supported a single payer system (like other countries with better health care systems have) by over 50%, in multiple polls. They like Medicare and (by majorities) they wanted Medicare extended to people under 65.

During the Democratic primary, I saw a rundown of campaign contributions from the health care industry. Recalling from memory, it was:

Hillary Clinton $8.8 million

Barak Obama $8.4 million

Dennis Kucinich $40,000 (from the California Nurses Association).

Kucinich supported single payer.

As soon as Obama got into office, he broke his promise to support a single payer system. He came up with a compromise (public option), then a compromise of that compromise, and finally threw government-funded health care under the bus. The current plan is the same private insurance system, with subsidies for the private insurance industry to prevent it from collapsing immediately.

All of the touching letters to Obama didn't make any difference. He followed the interests of his financial contributors rather than the interests of the people who elected him. Now we're paying twice as much for health care as the next most expensive country, for care that isn't even always as good. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/wireStory?id=10987822 http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2010/Jun/Mirror-Mirror-Update.aspx

The best explanation I've seen for this was at Bill Moyer's Journal. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/watch.html Moyers said that Obama never *wanted* a meaningful reform. He never *wanted* single payer. He *wanted* to cut a deal with the insurance industry.
 

And many people are homeless, many are in poverty, many are miserable and so on. Nothing is ever perfect or is going to be perfect. Your point being? No seriously, what are you trying to say?

What is your point here? That because we can never be perfect that we shouldn't even try? That 10% unemployment doesn't matter because rich people are making out ok?

All I'm saying is that we need to measure success with a metric that relates in some way to something that actually matters. It doesn't mean shit if the DOW goes to 20,000 if people can't get jobs.

No seriously, what are you trying to say? Do you have a solution that doesn't make thing even worse or implodes the economy in thirty years?

The economy implodes on it's own every 30 years anyway.

Because we live in a capitalistic society where the economy is driven by investment and money.

Now you're just begging the question. Money is important because we live in a capitalistic society where money is important.

The rest works out from there

This is simply an article of faith.

Money can also be measured easily while everything else can't

Reminds me of the story of the guy on his hands and knees under a streetlight looking for his wedding ring. "Where was the last time you had it?" "I was across the street." "Then why are you looking here?" "Because this is where the light is."

BTW, Bhutan would disagree with you about what can and cannot be measured.

If you do not understand the basic foundations of the society you live in then either don't argue about them or go read a book about them.

I understand the foundations of society just fine. Well enough to see the flaws. If there's one thing that everyone should have learned from the recent crisis it's that economics is not settled science. It's really sad to see people not take home that basic lesson.

You're sure there are abuses? well so am I. In fact I have no doubt personally that the abuses far outweigh any possible good that can come of the classification system. Time after time throughout history the US government has classified information for the sole reason that it's embarrassing to those currently in power. Until we require a judge to review every classification for legality (and I mean every one from presidential orgies to black ops) the abuses will continue. The government's record on this is absolutely unacceptable.

PBS Newshour, BBC World News America

In their defense, AOL is still an okay company. They aren't as big as they used to be in the 90s, but then neither is Sega and I still like them.

- I used AOL back in the 80s when they were called Quantum Link. It was the only service that provided full-color graphics, like a primitive website: http://toastytech.com/guis/c64gquantumlink.gif
- http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/files/Habitat%20scene.gif
- I continued using them for my first ISP to serve web pages to my Commodore Amiga.
- I dropped them after the whole "busy signal" debacle.
- But then went back to them when they provided Accelerated Dialup under the name "netscape isp". It's great for travel, or backup when the Broadband fails, and only costs $7.

So basically I've been a customer of theirs, minus a brief break, for nearly 25 years.

I don't know why you're taking medical advice from a physicist though.

Because I'm not arguing that children that live closer to power lines don't have higher likelyhoods of developing leukemia. I'm arguing that EMF is not the cause, and physicists are infinitely more qualified to speak on that matter.

As stated here, "there is no biological mechanism to explain the higher risk". Correlation does not imply causation, and in this case there is a very very notible absense of scientifically sound proposed mechanisms for causation.

If you want to play this just by references, then here you go. Courtesy of the paper I previously linked to you, I'd suggest actually reading it instead of dismissing it for being writting by a physicist (what could a physicist possibly know about EMF after all?). I think this trumps some article in Times..., have fun:

1. Wertheimer N, Leeper E. Electrical wiring configurations and childhood cancer. American Journal of Epidemiology 109:273-284, 1979.
2. Brodeur P. Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up the Threat to Your Health. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
3. Brodeur P. The Great Power Line Cover-Up: How the Utilities and Government Are Trying to Hide the Cancer Hazard Posed by Electromagnetic Fields. (Little-Brown, 1993, hardback). There is also a 1995 paperback edition.
4. PBS Frontline. Currents of Fear. Program #1319, originally aired June 13, 1995.
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PBS had a great show called Dimming the Sun and IIRC they delve into showing how the 9/11 air traffic halt raised the temperature in American cities by 1 or 2 degrees. The contrail cover from planes reflect more light from the sun.

I've previously read a write-up on persistent cloud formations over shipping lanes and harbors so the exhaust itself is likely a factor.

Can't find anything in depth at the moment, but there is mention of it here

.... how the stock market responds and in essence figures out how to sap off money based on this relationship. But where does the money sapped off come from?

At the end of the day what will have been achieved is high level abstract manipulation that only further deteriorates the value of the stock market for business investment and retirement financial returns.

We have already seen the results of such stock market manipulation on a world scale that neither helped business or retirement funding but rather destroyed it from banks and corporate retirement funds and much worse if you just follow the money and what manifested from where it was taken from.
Dial 911

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stockmarket.html
 

... that for all the shit that goes on in the world to be revealed to the world public that the mass majority of the shit is so totally uncalled for and only exist because of other shit being covered up and kept from other cover up efforts...

The shit needs to be coming out and we can start with Haliburtion blowing the deep water horizon oil rig in tneir pathetic little fucking oil war.

We did not need the oil brought up at this time, we have plenty (this is a fact) and the best holding tank is the earth.
It was tapped as a matter of securing right to the oil vein, which is large. It was tapped sooner than it was supposed to be.
The rig was supposed to be blown before it was tapped..... oops!

This fucking the world shit has to stop! Fuck the Pentagon we don't need it, they are one major supporter of cover ups.

Excuse me but I live here too and I'm tired of the fucking smell of covered up shit!

People, you need to start looking at the information that is available and god damn't start thinking it out!!!!

Try this on for starters. What the World Wants and ask your self why in hell is this not being done? Want to stop terrorist then remove their reasons for existing, instead war monger feed it...... What the fuck?

What lead up to 911? A Trillion dollar bet!!! justy follow the god damn money people. You can even see who the loosers were if you do that. Hint One company name starts with a "W" and another starts with an "E" and there were more too... follow the money god damn't and all the way to 9/11.

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe I'm not but one thing is for certain, you are not going to know the truth if you don't use your brain and your common sense enough to realize there are coverups and far to many but more than enough to know you can figure things out for yourself. And the general media is not going to fucking spell it out for you. They are afraid of anthrax threats, just ask Ted Turner about that or look it up on the internet.

The problem is that, in their guilt trip, biologists have blamed man for the state of pretty much every endangered species on the planet. Can you name a single endangered species (or even variety of species) that man is *not* blamed for right now? I doubt there is even one. So that means that we are supposed to preserve every single species that happens to exist at this particular moment in our planet's history, like some weird zoo where we've effectively stopped natural selection?

Wow, slow down! Try the decaf. Some of us are biologists and not every card carrying biologist is a member of PETA. You do have a point as the environmentalist movement tends to hammer hard on every potential species or ecosystem lost and it's usually, as you mention, the result of evil, nasty, smell 'mankind' (as opposed to 'humankind'). Unfortunately, we really don't know why a lot of extinctions take place. Some of the best studied ones do seem to be human caused. Even early humans may have been responsible for numerous large animal extinctions (go look it up). So we have a long track record in this regard. We also seem to be in the midst of another mass extinction and one that is at least partially human caused.

Will 'nature' deal with this 'problem'. Sure will. Come back in a couple of million years and you may find very little sign of homo industrialis. Many people aren't comfortable with that sort of time frame and so they complain, come up with hyperbolic arguments, get elected to Congress and all manner of silly things.

Truth is, it's hard to separate us from them. We are part of natural selection.

There have been, what, 6 terrorist plane incidents in the last 10 years, 2 of which had no fatalities, in the US? And 6 crashes with fatalities due to other reasons in the same period. Looks like we'd be better of putting time, effort, and money should be put into plane maintenance; mechanic, air controller, and pilot training, salaries, and working conditions; instead of security theater. See also: PBS Frontline's Flying Cheap.

I guess it just goes to show how quickly a field is progressing when 2/3 of the comments on a slashdot story ignorantly assume it's still science fiction and couldn't possibly require legislation. However, I hope this is defined very carefully not to preclude important medical research. Growing a human ear on a mouse, for example, might seem like a gross waste of time, but perhaps not if you're a soldier whose soft tissue was burned off by an IED. (That image is from way back in 1997 BTW).

... raise money for a business to expand and improve their products & serves. Those who invested would share in the profits of losses.

You invest in companies you believed in. This helped industry grow.

Today that no longer really exist as the stock market has gotten so abstract that you may not even know where your money is invested. For all you know your money could be going to a company developing bad things. But what do you care so long as your money is growing.

What this story really tells is how so totally abstract the market has gotten that it becomes a different game every few minutes.

Perhaps the best thing to do is reset the game.

There are plenty of examples where the abstract levels of the stock market was used to extract lots of money in its transfer of money game.
The Trillion dollar bet which is people would just follow teh money they would know what triggered off 9/11 (all the information you need is public accessible - media won't do it as they were threated with anthrax) Then there is Bernie Madoff and more...

Stock Markets are not working for teh reasons they were created and this story only points out the extream of what the original purpose is getting distorted.

You can never find a majic formula, for there is only so much money in the market and to win a bundle means some others have to lose a bundle.

A magic formula would be win win, and that is the way the market was suppose to work. YOu invested in companies they produced better products and services (real tangable wealth). But just mobving money around is not producing anything but trader fees and who has the money. Where are teh products and services in this? Ph wait, its all about financial products and services, forget food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc...

The dangers of abstraction.

linky

No, patents are broken. They're intended to work for limited times, but a number of strategies for extending them have arisen that make them indefinitely persistent. They're broken. Even in the best case they prevent progress. Look at the early example of the steam engine. The late movement to change them from first invention to first to patent promises to bring innovation to a grinding halt.

Even Tesla's invention of radio was for a long time blocked by Marconi's patents and only recognized after his death. Patents not only are broken, they have always been. Patents prevent progress, and the prevention of progress is the opposite of the purpose and justification for patents.

Patents are patently bad. The US Constitution grants to Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights - but it does not require Congress to do so. We can fix this.

As a liberal, I am very, very upset with the man I voted for right now. At least Bush was just an idiot with Katrina. Obama seems to be deliberately pandering to Big Oil.

I'm not disappointed with Obama, I never expected any different. Here's a classic article on Obama, from Bill Moyer's journal, with Matt Taibbi and disillusioned Obama fanboy Robert Kuttner http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/transcript1.html During the elections, http://www.commondreams.org/ had lots of stuff about Obama. His legal work in Chicago was to represent clients who were privatizing public housing.

The Democratic Party just takes hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, and follows the interests of their campaign contributors rather than the people who vote for them. (Just like the Republicans.) We saw that in health care. When the progressive Democratic activists ran TV ads to push blue-dog Democrats to support the public option, Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called them "fucking retards" in a White House meeting. Then Emanuel apologized -- to the retarded organizations.

The Democrats lost one election because they kissed off the left, who voted for Nader. Maybe the way to get more respect from the Democratic party is to start voting for third-party candidates again. Do you vote for somebody who calls you a fucking retard? I don't.