Slashdot Mirror

Makani power are planning to generate electricity using high altitude kites - at a cost competitive with coal power.

There's very little information about them for now but they did get a $10M investment from Google. Here is what Cringely dug up about them from old Usenet posts of one of the team members.

Nova covered ID/Creationism recently... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

...were open source.

People do things for reasons.
bear with me, I'll make the point clear.

9/11 was a response to the Trillion Dollar bet
It was no coincidence our defense system was in such a state as to not really respond.
Nor was it coincidence that building 7 was intentionally taken down though it contained documents regarding matters of the
trillion dollar bet that were under investigation by the SEC. Enron, Worldcom were a couple of the losers in the bet.
The dot com boom was a result of some winners needing to put their money somewhere.
And there is a lot more to this that is and has been "open source" publicly available.
However, the Anthrax threat against the News Media by our own government and the set up of the "Clear Channel" news network resulted in hiding the truth.

Social Security ain't gonna be there for me, as I get annual reports as to what decreasing percentage of what is to be own me, will be paid me. Why is it decreasing? Because the US government keeps taking our money away from us to use it on so called wars to protect our freedom. I'm going to be real free when I don't have a place to live because the government stole from me.

I suspect the idea is that in time people will forget the wrongs done them, as they die off.

But check this out: What the World Wants
It exposes the lies of teh self supported dependencies of war mongers and warfare.

The point is:

Its not religion, thats just philosophy that is wrapped around the real, and the real is all about money and trade value.

We the world have such a massive amount of money, we have the manpower and the knowledge, far more than we need to fix real world problems. And doing so would also remove real and many imaginary reasons supported by the real for warfare/terrorism, that warfare/terrorism would be clearly shown for what it really is. A self destructive, value draining illusion that we the world can do better by leaps and bound far beyond the constraints if this war illusion that not anyone having to do with commanding war is going to look good when this is put into practice.

Open Source, information made available, is what is exposing the fraud of war mongers and warfare.

And that is a SERIOUS Threat, a TERRORISM against the war mongers.

If Cringely is to be believed, and I have no reason not to, Burst is in the right here, having filed the patents long before Apple's infringing technology came along.

Note that I am an Apple fan, and have been using MacOS for 20 years. In this case they're pretty clearly in the wrong.

PBS's Wired Science magazine had a great segment (warning: video)on all of the things that someone has to do to launch a satellite - their example was a telecommunications satellite. It's a good watch if you want to know exactly why $10 million is not exactly a bad price....

This sounds to me like the media warming us up to another big telco subsidy by the federal gov't.... remember this?

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

From the FA: (fine article)

Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it.

Its like deja vu all over again!

you are exactly right.

an MIT lipid researcher found this out well over a decade ago and the ZONE diet was born.

the zone is a moderate carb, moderate protein, moderate fat diet that is designed to optimize one's hormonal response to what they eat.

the calorie in, calorie out folks don't realize that the body acts upon what it is fed and that this can make a big difference in how the body repsonds.

for example, take two twins and have them exercise the same and eat the same. they should turn out similar, no? my guess is they would. until you introduce anabolic steroids (muscle building portion of testosterone). now, both eat the same calories and exercise the same and what happens? will the anabolic steroid user gain more weight on the same amount of calories? i think it is patently obvious that he would, otherwise, anabolic steroids would be USELESS as one would just have to eat calories to get the same effect. you can't do that, so anabolic steroid sales is big business.

the zone is the unifying dietary theory.

here is a diet comparison:

http://www.zoneliving.com/ZoneLiving/Zoneversusotherdiets/tabid/62/Default.aspx

read through these testimonials:

http://drsears.com/Testimonials/tabid/473/Default.aspx

here are some more:

http://www.zoneliving.com/Default.aspx?tabid=93

and more:

http://www.epinions.com/well-Nutrition-Diets-All-The_Zone_Diet/sec_~opinion_list/display_~reviews/pp_~1/pa_~1#list

manuel uribe lost 400 lbs on the zone. more importantly, he lost his hunger and depression - and you *know* a 1230 lb guy has to have sopme serious hunger!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6612719.stm

pbs scientific frontiers did a study on diets and robin was the zone participant. she lost 45 lbs in 6 months and her favorite part of the diet was that it made her feel GREAT!

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm

dara torres, one of the original zone diet test subjects, recently set the 100m free swim american record with the second fastest time clocked this year.

AT 41 YEARS OF AGE (a 22 and 19 year old placed second and third)!

with just 16 months of training (after a 6 year retirement).

just 16 months after giving birth.

she does whatever makes sense to get that extra advantage - and she is a full throttle zoner.

the lady who recommended this diet to me was able to stop taking 12+ aspirin per day due to her repetitive strain injury. whe lost a ton of excess fat and had a ton of energy to do martial arts. her pain mostly disappeared.

a friend of mine who i turned onto the zone only had to wait one day for his multi-year acid reflux condition to completely vanish.

my testimonial is as follows:

1. i've lost 21 lbs since june (i'm about 5'10" and i dropped from 178.5 to 157.5).
2. after 20 years of ZERO weight training, i've gone from doing 10 lb flies to benching 175 lbs once on a day where i didn't feel so well (didn't eat a zone meal the night prior). i was doing 135 lbs 4 times in early september, i can do 145 lbs 8 times now. iow, i'v gained significant muscle mass while losing that net 21 lbs.
3. i've lost 3-4 inches off my waist. my chest, shoulders and arms have increased in size.
4. my lifelong allergy problem disappeared when i started supplementing epa and dha with ultra-refined fish oil.
5. at the ripe old age of 41, i'm closer to a six pack than i have ever been in my life. i wil

Actually, they're fascist. They only say they're socialist, rather like East Germany called itself Democratic.

Well, I guess some companies are run by morons because no matter how bleeding heart liberal you are, you should remember Tiananmen Square.

Sadly, no one who believes in Capitalism cares about Tianamen Square. Indeed, many of our captains of industry probably wish such things could happen here. Henry Ford certainly would have approved of the Chinese way of doing business, as would Edison.

Remember, remember the 5th of June

TWW

Based on the antics of the sectarian politicians who appointed them and militias which operate these facilities, for starters. Overcounting, undercounting and mis-attributing based on whatever political points can be scored at any given moment against their sectarian enemies.

It appears that the Iraqi Health Ministry was headed by those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, which therefore implies that they would have an incentive to overcount the numbers of dead, if we were to accept your argument.

Again, who does?

Whoever is hired to do so. In the case of reports by the Los Angeles Times, their Iraq correspondents did. One of them was interviewed here.

And I do notice your attempts to dodge my points about the geographical distribution and the sheer numbers of cementeries versus the available "checkers" in this methodology, as well as the attribution of causes of death, particularly when delayed or if caused by war-time hardships versus actual bullet wounds.

Those doing the checking probably use some form of sampling, or go to a central source, such as figures from the government. They don't just use counts from cemeteries, they also go to morgues, hospitals and health officials.

Your desperation to discount casualties of war reminds me of the equally reliable method the US forces have been using recently, whereby they count the dead based on the entry points of their bullet holes ...

Oh for fuck's sake, here is a O'Reilly's quote on the Fallujah assault I found in literally 30 seconds flat: "Problems continue for the U.S. Military in Fallujah. Why doesn't the U.S. Military just go ahead and level it?".

The US military has leveled cities before for far less.

His great concern about the civilian population is just oozing from that statement! There are many more where that came from and no, I am not going to be your search engine.

You're the one making the assertion, therefore it is up to you to back it up.

Its also easy to undertand the overall tone and attitude of these pundit's messages.

So give us some examples.

Next you are going to pretend that they are "fair and balanced" at which point your credibility would reach absolute zero, if it weren't already there for a long time.

What motivation would I have for saying they are "fair and balanced"? What does that have to do with anything?

So the Hutu RTLM radio advocated war on the Tutsis and called then "cockroaches". Big deal. Right? RIGHT?!

That is a lunatic comparison. The Tutsis weren't cutting people's throats, blowing up civilians and flying planes into skyscrapers.

You are making me laugh at your stupidity. Since Media Matters provides whole sections of O'Reilly's ramblings verbatim, complete with transcripts and audio or video, the only conculsion one can draw from your inane demand is that by "accurate, in-context" you mean either entire shows and radio programs or, more likely, your fantasies in which whatever the voices in your head tell you is always "in-context and accurate", without any actual relationship to recorded data in this universe. You are just a classic delusional loon long separated from reality.

Media Matters has taken statements out of context before. The vast majority of their site is nothing more than nitpicking and left-wing whining about statements that are "controversial" only in their own heads, statements that ordinary Americans generally don't care about.

As to "mudslingers", all the "mud" which is "slung" on

Back in 1997 NOVA did an episode, "Secrets of Lost Empires: Inca", where they went to Peru and filmed the natives building a grass suspension bridge in the traditional style. I'd recommend watching it if you want to see one of these things under construction, it really it amazing how they go from dry grass to a sturdy rope bridge.

There was an interesting bit of speculation on Cringely's part about this back in September. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070914_002928.html/

Cringely talked about those four conditions and the why of it back in July too. In short his take on it was that Google isn't really intending to win this, or it wouldn't have needed to have those conditions guaranteed. The conditions they did have accepted are:
# Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
# Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;
(from google blog)

... such as last Friday - seems he's got this one fairly pegged. Not sure I agree with his ideas about credit agencies etc.

A free, ad-supported Google cell service with GPhones would be pretty cool for you guys over there, I guess. Some people might be a bit wary of Google's dominance, but I suppose they'll still be blinded by Google's "Do No Evil" to think about how much Google already know/control. From my point of view, I'd just like people to be aware of how powerful they are - I've not made my mind up about whether I think they'll go rogue a la Microsoft...

Option 1: Vitrify (mix with glass to prevent chemical interaction with the environment) and drop to the bottom of the ocean at a subduction zone.

Over a short time the material will be covered in silt and mud. Over a long time it will be drawn into the Earth's crust and mantle. I'd call that a fairly permanent solution.

Option 2: Repeal the law banning enrichment for domestic power purposes.

Currently only about 2% of the fuel potential is actually used in today's power plant. If you can reprocess the spent fuel, separating out the junk from the readily fisible material, you can substantially reduce both the volume of waste and the amount of time the waste is dangerous.

Option 3: Move to thorium-based reactors.

For Thorium reactors, the fuel cycle is far more efficient and leaves far less waste and waste that is dangerous for a far shorter amount of time.

Option 4: Move to fast neutron reactors.

The fuel cycle is, again, far more efficient and leaves shorter-lived waste as well as far less waste.

-----

Those are four "good answers." No large-scale energy generation is going to be warm and fuzzy. Sorry, but that's the brutal truth. When you're talking about trillions of kilowatt-hours per year, it is absolutely the search for the lesser of many evils.

Think solar will solve our issues? We're having supply problems with silicon as it is. No, we're not running out of sand. Photovoltaics require clean rooms and much of the same infrastructure as computer chips. Lately, the price of computer chip materials have been increasing because of increasing solar panel production. What? Beam it down from space? Show me a prototype and I'll consider it. Until we see a proof of concept, it would be ridiculously stupid to base a nation's energy policy on it.

What? The solar panels that can be "painted?" Where was the prototype for that again? Exactly. Prototype comes before small-scale production. Small-scale production precedes large-scale production. If there's no prototype, you can't even begin to seriously consider policy based upon large-scale production.

That said, I think we should spend time with wind power, just not the windmill variety. Those suck.

Minimum 10MPH wind + Maximum 40MPH = Not Good Enough For a Nation.

Read about kite versions instead and why windmills just don't cut it. But once again I would want to see a proof of concept before committing.

P.S. To the hand-written paper-ballot (Australian ballot) wing nuts out there: your proposed solution is completely unworkable because it fails to account for reality.

Well, you didn't explain what you meant by that, but ftr, that's what Canada uses and it seems to work for them.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20031211_000795.html

My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right.

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology. The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale. In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours. Why does it take us 30 days or more?

The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.

We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots.

The whole thing suggest that we have the technology to analyze such a massive amount of constantly renewing information.

Assume that we do have such computing power, what would be better, more productive, perhaps even disease solving applications of such computing power?
Now is it possible to extract and identify in such a massive constant flow of information what would be coded communication, coded into normal everyday phrases that only the receiver would recognize the meaning?

This spying wasn't to find terrorist. It was to get an overview of public opinion and public intelligence and for the use of the Bush administration intent on manipulation of the news media via scare tactic of the antrax threat. They had control over the news media, they needed to know what to have them tell the public.

There is this issue of the "Trillion Dollar bet" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stockmarket.html
About the winners and even more about the losers such as enron, worldcom, etc...
But also about the retaliation reason/excuse of those who participated in the 9/11 WTC fall. Building 7 contained relevant SEC information and that building was intentionally taken down by US. Destroying the records being review for criminal activity.

Anyways, it really helps to have a "clear channel" view of the American public, when you want to manipulate them, deceive them.

The act was not against any individual but against the American public and the immunity BS is still applying cover-up tactics as it presents the matter in a false light.

Hmm, interesting. Two pictures of random signs that could be anywhere, and two pictures of the front of the building. None of which show anything remotely interesting. Incriminating stuff, that :) Not that I don't think they do this, just that the pictures are....underwhelming...

An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables...was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room"

The words "exact", "copy", "all", "traffic", and "flowed" are open to interpretation.

How so? To me that he gave a precise, unambiguous and accurate description of the function of an ADC 50/50 Optical Splitter (such as the one used here.

Cringely backs you up wrt the service and most of what you speculate about. But he doesn't think the actual phone hardware is a necessary piece.

With all respect for Franklin, but if there's one man who could have really done it, it is Tesla. http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/view/

esp. Chapter 2

They helped us get the northern alliance to work with us again after they'd been tossed aside after the afghan-soviet war.

PBS recently had a one hour episode of Frontline about Dick Cheney on October 16, 2007. It well researched and went into great detail about Dick Cheney and David Addington's quest to expand presidential power in ways that were both legally and constitutionally questionable. Expanding presidential power was a major part of their efforts to perform domestic spying and to be allowed to use torture on suspected terrorists.

If I remember correctly, that episode of Frontline did not say very much, about the alleged manipulating of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. Most of its criticisms of Dick Cheney were for different reasons than what were mentioned in the Washington Post article.

• Cheny's Law Transcript of Oct. 16, 2007 episode of Frontline
• Cheny's Law DVD of Oct. 16, 2007 episode of Frontline

PBS recently had a one hour episode of Frontline about Dick Cheney on October 16, 2007. It well researched and went into great detail about Dick Cheney and David Addington's quest to expand presidential power in ways that were both legally and constitutionally questionable. Expanding presidential power was a major part of their efforts to perform domestic spying and to be allowed to use torture on suspected terrorists.

If I remember correctly, that episode of Frontline did not say very much, about the alleged manipulating of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. Most of its criticisms of Dick Cheney were for different reasons than what were mentioned in the Washington Post article.

• Cheny's Law Transcript of Oct. 16, 2007 episode of Frontline
• Cheny's Law DVD of Oct. 16, 2007 episode of Frontline

You mentioned Dick Cheney and constitutional power. Did you see the recent Oct. 16, 2007 "Cheney's Law" episode of Frontline on PBS? That week's episode was about Dick Cheney and David Addington's secret behind-closed-doors battle to expand presidential power. It details how much of what they have been doing is on shaky ground legally and constitutionally. Their actions frequently involved rejecting congressional authority and doing whatever they wanted based on their own creative legal theories.

Back in High School, I vaguely recall learning that writers of the constitution carefully divided power among the three branches of government: the president, congress and the judicial system. It was a carefully calculated balance of power, that prevents any one branch of government from having too much power and gaining total control. It seems to me the Cheney and Addington's attempts to expand presidential power and defy congress would be contrary to what the writers of the constitution really wanted.

It also describes the unorthodox legal maneuvering used for activities such spying on Americans after 9/11.

I do not know much about law or the constitution, but the show was interesting. I plan to order the DVD of the show or read the transcript, to refresh my memory of various details. Here is a link to the transcript.

Cheney's Law

if commercial sets are too tame, there's always the internets (note archive.org link)

buy chemicals here (...while you can -- the feds are actively working to shut this guy down)

btw, chemistry sets were lame even 30 years ago. the chemicals they came with were things like alum, lime, aspirin, melting salt

and a link to click on if you fear your government more than terrorism (vote in the PRIMARY dammit -- before the repub. machine grinds up Paul and spits him out; like the dem. machine did to howard dean)

There was a short segment on United Nuclear on WIRED science on PBS recently. Apparently, the feds don't really like what they are doing, and they sent a SWAT team, arrested the owner, and in the end, fined him US $30000 for shipping dangerous materials across state lines. It must have been in one of Episodes 1-3. Could have been this one, but I'm not too certain. Check you favorite torrent site - there was also an episode on chemistry sets, and how they have been neutered, even down to chemistry sets withouth chemicals.

"LIFE'S LITTLE QUESTIONS"
SHOW 904
http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript904.htm

Most of the time, though, your credit card company will be on your side, especially if you are a high-value account that buys lots of stuff and have a high credit limit.

Well, no; what they really like are customers who don't know how to pay off their bill every month. Frequency of use and credit limit are only useful indicators insofar as they lead to partially or unpaid bills and actual interest; there are some who use a lot with a high limit who do pay off in full all the time - credit companies hate them because there's no money to be made. For most cases, it probably just costs less to side with the consumer.

(Didn't click the more comments link repeatedly, maybe somebody else already wrote this; but whatever.)

Here is what's significant about Google putting code into MySQL: they haven't done it before. Google has been a MySQL user from almost the very beginning, customizing the database in myriad ways to support Google's widely dispersed architecture with hundreds of thousands of servers. Google has felt no need previously to contribute code to MySQL. So what changed? While Google has long been able to mess with the MySQL code in ITS machines, it hasn't been able to mess with the code in YOUR machine and now it wants to do exactly that. The reason it will take so long to roll out MySQL 6.1 is that Google will only deliver its MySQL extensions for Linux, leaving MySQL AB the job of porting that code to the 15 other operating systems they support. That's what will take until early 2009.

Yes, because it was Iran that destroyed that country's infrastructure (water, sewers, roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, museums, everything except the oil infrastructure)

Gee, troll much?

Please provide references for this idea that the US destroyed Iraq's infrastructure. From what I have been able to figure out, Iraq's infrastructure already sucked under Saddam Hussein's regime (everyone had their own generators because they couldn't depend on the grid, for example). Baghdad had better power than anywhere else in Iraq, and it didn't have power 24/7.

Military operations didn't help anything, but the occupying American troops have been repairing and rebuilding stuff. The problem is that insurgents keep blowing stuff up.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/middle_east/iraq/jan-june07/infrastructure_01-25.html

The insurgents are not necessarily stupid. They know that it's easier for them to blow up a power plant than to attack troop convoys, and it helps accomplish the goal of making everyone suffer. (Let them take control, and they will stop trying to make everyone suffer. And they'll try to kill anyone they don't like, so if they do a good job of killing their opposition, maybe no one will blow up the power plants anymore.)

And you know what? The insurgents also keep blowing up sections of oil pipeline, so the oil infrastructure is messed up too.

So, what should the US policy be? Just pull out so the insurgents will be happy and stop blowing things up? Stay in and keep killing all the insurgents they can find, and keep training the Iraqi army so they can someday take over security duties? Neither one is a perfect option but I don't think I prefer the first one.

Love him or hate him, Cringely is talking about a somewhat related topic today.

This is true. I recommend watching Rumsfeld's War to back up some of these claims.

The original intent was to tie Saddam into 9/11 and attack Iraq first, as opposed to the Taliban/Afghanistan.

The 3 hours video of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene also explains String Theory pretty well. Although the video is quite old, it was the first video that made me feel so interested and excited about String Theory.

California has the some of the strictest air pollution laws in the country. We also have stricter industry laws, stricter labor laws, better consumer protection. In other words, California isn't business friendly as other states and errors on whats best for the Citizens of the California. The social morality/values of California is what attracts some of the most talented people in the world to California This in return attracts businesses. Only issues we have is that Bush is not allowing us to regulate greenhouse gases as per California state law.

Smog is slowing global warming according to this PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3310_sun.html and other studies. We need to prevent solar radiation from hitting the ground until the green house gases are lowered. If humans are really causing global warming, then the temperature will slowly go down. Once the temperature begins to lower AND statistically can be proven, then the smog can slowly be lowered over decades.

We have to keep our smog emissions up or we'll cause more global warming, not less by reducing green house gases!
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/PBS_show_asserts_greenhouse_gases,_atmospheric_pollutants_dimming_future

As usual, the masses get an oversimplified solution to a complex problem when the science is inconclusive. None of these problems or solutions will ever be discussed or provided in enough detail outside a conference setting to not be dumbed down. Certainly don't completely trust a movie, newspaper article, or even a magazine article. Heck, it they can't spell every name correctly in the article, why would you expect them to get the science correct within the word limit too? A scientist will provide an upper and lower estimate for an outcome and document the assumptions that go into those predictions. Sadly, a journalist will condense that into the "could" phrase paired with the worst case possible, because that will get your attention. They will use alarming headlines EVEN if those headlines are the best guess, but simply the worst case.

Politicians will grab onto either the worse or best case dependent on their goals, who lobbies and contributes the most. If they can't discuss both sides at length and only say their sides talking points, hold onto your wallet, it is going to cost you money and may be really bad for us all.

And don't discount that scientist don't get publicity without always saying that "more study is needed" to determine other unknowns. That's a trick I used in grad school to get grant money with my adviser. More study is always needed ... so he could make mortgage payments next semester and I could afford new jeans.

Be a critical thinker and reader.

-FL

And I am not aware of any government mandate regarding last mile buildout. By policy the FCC encourages better access for everyone, but can you cite any Order that requires specific actions? I don't even recall a NPRM along those lines.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html.

'Nuff said.

The real question is: when did you stop working in the telco regulatory environment? I'd say things have changed significantly with respect to the telcos in the last 5 to 10 years. It's only within that period of time, after all, that the telcos have become effective monopolies on a nationwide scale again.

As for your incredulity at the notion that corporations now own the government, do you really think the general population wants the telcos to be let off the hook with respect to the domestic spying issues? That's just one of many issues where the government's stance is sharply aligned with that of the corporations and against that of the general population. There's a reason the approval rating of the president is some 30% and the approval rating of congress is even lower than that: http://www.gallup.com/poll/101764/Congressional-Job-Approval-Public-Mood-Still-20-Range.aspx.

Governments which listen to their people don't have approval ratings that low.

You can keep your head in the sand as long as you like. Just don't be surprised to find yourself living in a fascist "paradise" when you pull your head out.

I'm not so "up" on this particular subject, but I did see this fellow speak to some committee a while back [CSPAN] on The Spectrum Sale, or something related.
In this administation of incompetence, this guy is a real relief to hear speak - about what is the people's, he is the real deal.

Bill Moyers talks with FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08242007/watch.html

MICHAEL J COPPS: Now we're back at square one. It's all up for grabs. And if we are going to do better this time around, it's going to be because of input from folks like you.

MICHAEL COPPS: Well, we're going at it without a policy. We're going at it without a vision. We're going at it without realizing what these things mean to the future of our country. Whether it's broadcast or broadband.The public airwaves are to be used for serving the public interest. Expanding our cultural horizon, covering community news, enabling the democratic dialogue. Increasingly, we have moved away from that vision and they're being used for corporate profitability.

MICHAEL COPPS: Yeah. It appears 112 times in the Telecommunications Act. The term public interest convenience and necessity. So I know darn well Congress was serious about it.

BILL MOYERS: You're talking about the 1934 Act.

MICHAEL COPPS: Right.

You know it's BAD when you get excited about someone speaking "common sense" on CSPAN. The link is worth the time to view.

Where DO they hide these quality people - and who do we have to blow to get them in government?
[don't answer that]

The latest episode of Frontline, which aired on Tuesday, explains how the administration has manipulated power in favor of the executive branch, making questionably legal moves in order to make the wiretapping program possible. Had the checks and balances been working, that program would never have made it off the ground. Congress has fought the program with generalized attacks, but has never gone so far as to eliminate it.

As for Congress being less popular than the president: I can only imagine that's because a) the people who agree with Bush like him for his charm, and Congress has little charm, and b) the majority of people who dislike the president end up hating Congress for being unwilling to stand up to him. I'm in that boat.

Congress should look at it this way: if they're so unpopular, they have nowhere to go but up by taking on the president's policies.

PBS has a GREAT GREAT documentary about the Bush's Administration...errrr...Cheney's Administration abuse of Executive power. "For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power" PBS Frontline News. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/

I recommend watching Frontline: Cheney's Law, which aired on Tuesday (the 16th). It's an eye-opening look at the broad expansion of powers that has taken place under Cheney's guidance. This issue of Frontline discusses the wiretap program as well as torture. What surprised me most is that it makes John Ashcroft look like the voice of reason during his years in the administration.

I suppose you are Brazilian, because you sound like other Brazilians with whom I have talked.

"The only thing I don't like about US is that they think they are the peacemakers of international relations. I mean, Iraq can't have nukes and US can? Have Iraq ever used a nuke to kill innocent civilians?"

Good observation.

"... the air is so polluted..."

The air is more polluted in San Diego, on days when the wind is blowing south from Los Angeles. Why? Partly because people in L.A. have so many more cars than in São Paulo. Partly because there are few cars fueled with alcohol in Los Angeles.

"Also, I feel much more safe walking down the street."

Good point.

"Do they [American women] despite [despise] men? Treat them badly?"

You don't know very much about women in the U.S. if you ask that question. See this quote from a comment in this Slashdot thread: "... many men all around the world seem to regard American women as some of the most aggressive and downright ferocious females on the whole darn planet. I have traveled a great deal and talked with guys about this perception in more than 50 countries."

"First you talk about corruption and use WAR arguments to support that?"

Part of the taxes you pay in San Diego, California will go for murdering innocent people, because the people who control the U.S. government want to make more profit in weapons and oil. Because you are paying the government to kill, you are now a killer. How do you feel about that?

"If the US is more corrupt, then they hide that a LOT better than we do."

That's the issue, entirely. Cheney has engineered a largely secret overthrow of the U.S. government, and broken the rule of law that was strong for decades. You can see a video about that, if you like: Cheney's Law (First aired yesterday, on 2007-10-16)

-FL

I know you're joking, but there really IS a "Global Darkening" phenomenon, at least according to THIS episode of NOVA.

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with - and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar - but no dog - the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while - plenty of company - and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.

-- Mark Twain

So Steve has killed the clonemakers, or has he? Power Computing is absorbed, Motorola is getting out of the Mac business and taking a $95 million charge, while IBM will apparently cut off its Mac production for OEMs. But somehow Umax got a license for MacOS 8.0, as did Powertools. These two companies were able to succeed where IBM and Motorola couldn't simply because they were willing to pay dramatically higher royalties to Apple. It's not that Jobs was adamantly opposed to clones, but that he wanted Apple to make as much profit from each clone as it did from its own production.