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Actually, the QuickTime versions seem to work better.

wget http://www.pbs.org/media/22ndcentury/22ndcentury_3 84.mov
mplayer 22ndcentury_384.mov

wget http://www.pbs.org/media/kcet/wiredscience/wired-p ilot-full_480.mov -O wired_pilot_full_480.mov
mplayer wired_pilot_full_480.mov

wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_1_300. mov -O ch1.mov
wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_2_300. mov -O ch2.mov
wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_3_300. mov -O ch3.mov
wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_4_300. mov -O ch4.mov
wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_5_300. mov -O ch5.mov
wget http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/si/video/chapter_6_300. mov -O ch6.mov
mplayer ch*.mov

They don't seem to have that last one as one big file.

mplayer mms://wm.z1.mii-streaming.net/media/pbs/windows/ge neral/windows/kcet/wiredscience/wired-pilot-full_3 20.wmv

wget http://media.pbs.org/asxgen/general/windows/wgbh/s i/chapter_all_308.asx
mplayer chapter_all_308.asx

In the Wired Science pilot, starting at 22m 45s, we are treated to an attractive show host that cuts through a large flat panel screen with a circular saw. That gets my vote.

• Wired Science, 170 MiB
• Science Investigators, 299 MiB
• 22nd Century, 155 MiB

• Wired Science, 170 MiB
• Science Investigators, 299 MiB
• 22nd Century, 155 MiB

• Wired Science, 170 MiB
• Science Investigators, 299 MiB
• 22nd Century, 155 MiB

Nerd TV

Just read here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/p rediction_bob_20060104_000992.html

However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_200 60518_000897.html

MANY IBM employees DO feel this way, btw. IBM appears to be spending little in the way of future product development (including feature enhancements to current products), other than just outright buying companies and incorporating their products. Stock performance has been mediocre for years.

Sooner or later, that kind of internal attitude starts showing up to your customers.

Just read here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/p rediction_bob_20060104_000992.html

However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_200 60518_000897.html

MANY IBM employees DO feel this way, btw. IBM appears to be spending little in the way of future product development (including feature enhancements to current products), other than just outright buying companies and incorporating their products. Stock performance has been mediocre for years.

Sooner or later, that kind of internal attitude starts showing up to your customers.

I wonder if this has any relation to the Robert X. Cringely hard drive.

Bob's Disk Drive:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_200 61026_001143.html

The Wired article mentions Iron. Cringely's mentions Stainless Steel?

The first of several sensitive reports crossing his desk was from a foreign intelligence service source "who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle." The source said "Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing (a nuclear weapon)." (Saddam's nuclear weapons) committee members assured Saddam that once fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in 18 to 24 months."

Blix said he views the U.S.-North Korea agreed framework as "a way of
promoting the implementation of the safeguards agreement" which already
exists between the IAEA and the DPRK. It was Pyongyang's announcement that
it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
together with its threat to suspend permission for IAEA inspectors to carry
1ut their safeguards work, that triggered the North Korean nuclear crisis
in March 1993.

Hans Blix personally admonished Saddam for "cat and mouse" games [3] and warned Iraq of "serious consequences" if it attempted to hinder or delay his mission [4].

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has already made it clear that the government can do whatever it wants with your mail, without a court order. In a Senate hearing on warrantless domestic spying last February, Gonzales refused to answer that same direct question from a United States Senator:

-------

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Did it authorize the opening of first class mail of U.S. Citizens? Just -- that you can answer yes or no.

ALBERTO GONZALES: There is all kinds of wild speculation about what the --

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Did it authorize it?

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: Let him finish.

ALBERTO GONZALES: There is all kinds of wild speculation out there about what the president has authorized and what we're actually doing. And I'm not going to get into a discussion, Senator, about hypotheticals.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Mr. Attorney General, you're not answering my question. I'm not asking you what the president authorized. Does this law --you're the chief law enforcement officer of the country. Does this law authorize the opening of first-class mail of U.S. citizens-- yes or no-- under your interpretation?

ALBERTO GONZALES: Senator, I think -- I think that, again, that is not what is going on here. We're only focused on communications -- international communications where one part of the communication is al-Qaida. That's what this program is all about.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: You haven't answered my question.

From http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/jan-june06 /presidential_2-6.html
---------

And, with a very Bushy smirk, for those of us watching on TV, Gonzales never did answer Leahy's simple, basic question "Can the government open the first class mail of U.S. citizens without a warrant?" Under George Bush, who clearly believes himself and his minions to be above the law, the answer is "Of course it can."

but I do know you are mistaken about astronomers not reporting UFO's. I would suggest that you might do better research before making any more such bold and misleading statements, (like your previous comments regarding photography).

Talk about pot calling the kettle black. I suggest you read what reasonable people like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, or the folks at The Skeptic have to say. Mustn't forget to include Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy take on UFO nuttiness.

There is a difference between scientific ignorance and gullible ignorance. I know I don't know anything and am willing to be educated, but it doesn't mean I have to take what people say at face value, and if I learn it's bullshit, I'll call it bullshit. Especially UFOs as alien spacecraft bullshit. Having an open mind doesn't mean a lack of critical thinking.

If there really are aliens visiting earth in flying saucers, why then, and I'm really trying to understand this, why then would someone travel, perhaps, thousands of light years to abduct some stranger on a farm or isolated spot and give him an anal probe?

Consumer preference data is not very suitable for intelligence use, particularly as the primary source of information used for screening.

The truth is Einstein was not a healthy man.

First off his wife helped him come up with the e=mc^2 theory, yet she received no credit for it.

In the original publishing of the theory in 1905 she was credited with co-author credits

Einstein himself spoke to her as an equal in respect to science. He all but admits to collaborating with her on his 1905 papers which made him famous.

In a 1901 letter he refers to the theory of relativity as our work

Another small piece of Einstein history that few people know is the terms of his divorce from his first wife (The woman mentioned above) was that she received all prize money when he wins a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity. He agreed to this and in fact Einstein never saw any of the money when he won the Nobel prize.


Einstein awarded Nobel PrizeAfter seven nominations, Albert wins the 1921 medal for physics. He gives the prize money to Mileva, per their 1919 divorce agreement. It is the smallest cash award since the Nobel Prize was created, worth about $348,000 (in 2003 USD).


Sorry, I can't link to it but it is in the PBS timeline.

The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!

cousin fucker

So there you have it folks, the man so many think of as a symbol of modern science not only stole ideas (or at the very least refused to acknowledge getting help) from his wife but also decided that it would be fun to screw his cousin.

The truth is Einstein was not a healthy man.

First off his wife helped him come up with the e=mc^2 theory, yet she received no credit for it.

In the original publishing of the theory in 1905 she was credited with co-author credits

Einstein himself spoke to her as an equal in respect to science. He all but admits to collaborating with her on his 1905 papers which made him famous.

In a 1901 letter he refers to the theory of relativity as our work

Another small piece of Einstein history that few people know is the terms of his divorce from his first wife (The woman mentioned above) was that she received all prize money when he wins a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity. He agreed to this and in fact Einstein never saw any of the money when he won the Nobel prize.


Einstein awarded Nobel PrizeAfter seven nominations, Albert wins the 1921 medal for physics. He gives the prize money to Mileva, per their 1919 divorce agreement. It is the smallest cash award since the Nobel Prize was created, worth about $348,000 (in 2003 USD).


Sorry, I can't link to it but it is in the PBS timeline.

The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!

cousin fucker

So there you have it folks, the man so many think of as a symbol of modern science not only stole ideas (or at the very least refused to acknowledge getting help) from his wife but also decided that it would be fun to screw his cousin.

Speaking of another Nova, a recent episode of Nova ScienceNOW on PBS featured Element-114. It was a great feature and even kept my high school chemistry classes in rapt attention for 15 minutes. Quite an accomplishment.

Watch the segment online.

I couple reasons i can think of off hand why it less than ideal:

1) Continues trend of pouring CO2 into the atmosphere
2) Have you ever *seen* a strip mining operation? http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/razingappalachi a/mtop.html

I don't want that shit happening where I live. All the logging is bad enough.

-matthew

Nikola Tesla demonstrated "wireless" communication (which became known as "radio") as early as 1893. In 1943, the Supreme Court declared that Tesla had invented the radio, not Marconi. I'm afraid this celebration is about thirteen years too late...

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

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html

A really good book to read to learn more about one of the greatest electrical engineers in history is "Man Out Of Time" by Margaret Cheney.

Remarks by President Bill Clinton, February 17, 1998
But for all our promise, all our opportunity, people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril -- especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals. We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information, and ideas. And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. .....

Now, instead of playing by the very rules he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam has spent the better part of the past decade trying to cheat on this solemn commitment. Consider just some of the facts. Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months, and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.

In 1995, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pro

FYI, there was a recent episode of Nova on PBS all about Alberto Santos-Dumont.

I can eat a pizza without onions. I can buy onions in the store. Two separate items. Both completely functional. A computer without an OS is not functional. An OS without a computer is not functional. It's a stupid law.

Of course, this is coming from a country where people *riot* if they are not guaranteed, by law, that they cannot be fired for two years.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june06/f rance_4-4.html

Today with this story, it all makes perfect sense.

Gwen Ifill asks great questions, too bad nobody answers them.

Scary Times.

10. tasers
9. rubber hose to the feet
8. strapped to a chair being forced to watch "American Idol" ala A Clockwork Orange
7. millimeter wave device
6. extremely bright lights
5. sensory deprivation
4. At full volume playing Aqua's "Barbie Girl" over and over and over and over again.
3. IRS audit
2. waterboarding

and the number one tortue tech concept for 2007:

1. the amazing electrical testicle machine

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

PBS Frontline's 2002 documentary Bigger than Enron (watch online here) gives a good summary of how Enron and other big companies and accounting firms use stock options to fuddle-duddle their performance, and how they pay off Congress to keep it that way.

PBS has a number of other +5 Insightful documentaries that you can watch for free online, including other financial-related ones on Complicated tax shelter schemes (2004), credit card company tactics (2004), and The end of pensions by 401(k) (2006).

I strongly recommend all of their documentaries, which are supported by "viewers like you".

- RG> (not affiliated with PBS; loosely affiliated with PB&J)

Steve was upset that the Mac took too long to boot to boot up when you first turned it on so he tried motivating Larry Kenyon by telling him well you know how many millions of people are going to buy this machine - it's going to be millions of people and let's imagine that you can make it boot five seconds faster well that's five seconds times a million every day that's fifty lifetimes, if you can shave five seconds off that you're saving fifty lives. And so it was a nice way of thinking about it, and we did get it to go faster.

there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science

Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??

This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.

This is obviously a rare case event, but even the rarest events have to happen to someone; luckily for me, I didn't get hurt. Even if you don't believe this story (and I'm not expecting you to after all, this is Slashdot), at least admit that it carries more weight than the "SUV flipping over because they are too wide and trip on guardrails" claim.

Okay, let's check my memory of Bradsher's "High and Mighty" (2002). Here's some quotes, from pages 153-156 (trade paper, 2003 edition published by publicaffairs):

Federally funded tests have found that SUV drivers can face disaster if they strike a glancing blow at high speed against a guardrail with a top edge at 26 inches or lower. The rail can either "trip" the vehicle, causing it to roll over, or may even fail to keep the SUV on the road at all.

Even when guardrails are high enough to prevent vehicles from going over the top, their design poses special risks for SUVs. The problem, once again, is that SUVs are designed for off-road driving and have the wheels placed differently from car wheels.

The SUV's front wheels are close to the front of the vehicle with very little of the vehicle's structure in front of them so that they can climb up and over large rocks, or handle the transition from flat ground to a steep incline.

The problem, according to researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute, is that guradrails work best when they interact with a vehicle's metal structure. Problems arise when one of a vehicle's wheels gets far enough under the guardrail to snag the pillar holding up the rail. Since the pillars are virtually unbreakable, a snagged wheel either rips off or, if it stays on, achors that corner of the vehicle to the pillar while the rest of the vehicle swings around. In both cases, a rollover is likely.

SUVs were involved in fatal crashes with guardrails at a rate 20 percent higher than the typical vehicle. That is a surprisingly high number, because heavier vehicles usually protect their occupants better in guardrail crashes ...

SUV design is also changing in ways that may make this problem worse, not better. To reduce the risk of rollovers during everyday driving and improve overall vehicle stability, automakers have been mounting SUV wheels wider on new models. On some of the best-selling new models, like the 2002 Ford Explorer and Chevrolet vehicle, with very little metal in front of them.

So there you have it. I'd only give myself a B for memory on this one, I was pretty close, but not dead-on -- not too bad for a book I haven't looked at in years, I suppose.

• text of an interview with Brasher
• Review of 'High and Mighty'

Slaves didn't build the pyramids. That would explain the no pictograph part.

This reminds me of the "You can teach a man to fish" saying...

You mean:

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he gets rammed by a US submarine?

W says with this program he's "listening to al queda operatives in the United States make plans". My question is, if W knows al queda's phone number, why doesn't he go and bust them?

In all these years one can count the number of terrorist convictions racked up by the DOJ on one hand. Experts are saying there is no vast al queda presence in the United States (see PBS Frontline "enemy within" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/enemywithi n/view/)

Who the heck are they listening to...?

No, I disagree -- most politicians attacking civil rights like free speech easily figure that they are the biggest fishes in the pond. In their world view, restrictions on free speech will always apply to everyone else, never to them. Restrictions on civil rights like free speech are a good thing if you're in the elite. Added restrictions on what citizens can say or do makes it that much easier for the wealthy and the powerful to target you, or me or anyone else of lessor means who stands in their way. That's why people like Newt Gingrich can stand in front of an audience of his peers, calling for more laws, more restrictions on free speech and a 200 year roll-back of basic Constitutional rights. There's nothing new or astonishing about any of this. It really is this simple. It's a pattern repeated again and again throught human histroy. This is just the latest act in a drama that's been going on since the dawn of recorded time.

It works like this; people with money and power will always want more money and more power. People with money and power will always want more laws. People with money and power will always have the lawyers and the political greese to make onerous restrictions simply vanish in the wink of an eye. People without money and power will always be the first victims when governments impose new and tighter restrictions on rights like freedom of speech. Again, none of this is new. A quick look at world history will tell you this much.

If the Republicans have taught us anything in the last six years, it's that fear-mongering works wonders in convincing the voting public to place more and more restrictions on themselves. It is no surprise that Republican leaders continue to call for more laws and more restrictions on civil rights, all in the name of fighting terror. The political boogyman of global terror is a very effective tactic; why should the Republicans want to give up a strategy that works so well for them?

The War on Terror has nothing to do with preserving the freedoms of citizens. The War on Terror has everything to do with the expansion and consolidation of power among those who already have power. By both their words and their deeds, the Bush administration and their cohorts have demonstrated time and time again that they do not give a damn about civil rights. Torture, secret wire taps, detention without trial... the list goes on an on. No group who had any respect for the principles of civil rights would so often abuse a system they claim to believe in. Bush said it honestly when he said, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."Bush meant it folks. He wasn't kidding when he made that statement. When Gingrich says he'd like new restrictions on freedom of speech, he isn't kidding either, for all of the reasons cited above.

Newt's IQ is only in the 120s. (I assume PBS is acceptable? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline////newt/va nityfair2.html)

Book smart != common sense.

P.S. I'm willing to bet a great many Slashdotters, including myself, have a higher IQ than 120.

Guerilla tactics can often trump a large military force. Check out this amusing story about a recent American war game that was restarted, as the opposition commander used guerilla tactics and roundly defeated the vast forces massed against him:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/nature.html

...so about 15 years. That's about the same time scale that global warming as been debated.

It is only through dialogue that two sides will ever come to understand the views of the other.

You were talking to someone else, but I would like jump in and say I wish that could be tatooed on some people's foreheads. Chuckle.

Some people have no interest in understanding, and I have to admit that I have been guilty more than a few times of becoming... ah... less than polite (chuckle)... in frustration with people who not only have no interest in understanding but who literally do not care when they make an invalid argument. People who may even admit their arguments were shown invalid, and not care, and just grab and fling the next junk argument off a list on a junk website, simply flinging crap in the hope that sooner or later something will stick. It's the obscene not caring part that really infuriates. heh.

Seeing a reasonable post from someone interesed in understanding is a relief and veritable joy. If after reading this post have some specific doubt or question about evolution, I will gladly discuss it. If this thread locks, you can click my user-page and reply to one of my new posts on another story.

The evolution of the eye has been extensively studied, and almost all stages of that incremental change can be found today in various species. There are many technical papers with deep science on the subject, but Public Broadcasting System website (PBS.org )has a great little 4 minute video giving a beautifully clear demonstration on just how easy it is to evolve an eye. It obviously doesn't address all of the technical science that confirms it, but that science does exist. It also obviously does not address every aspect of the human eye, but each those other aspects shouldn't be hard to see as similarly evolvable improvments to an already functionally complete eye. Things like the iris and the musculature to independantly turn the eye.

As a programmer I can personally attest to the power of the abstract "process of evolution" to spontaneously create information and complexity. It is an amazing and powerfully convincing experience to set up a minimal replicating system containing no information about solving some task, and watching it evolve over generations and exhibit a variety of biology-type behaviours and to see it create information and create solutions to problems. If you happen to be a programmer, I heartily suggest to look into experimenting with Genetic Algorithms. Google will pull up tons of resources on the subject, of I can find you good starter links if you want. Any system, biological or digital, which goes through a repeated cycle of replication-with-inhertance and mutation and selection, any such system will undergo evolution and will create and accumulate information and structure and complexity over generations. If fact evolution is so powerful that it can and has been used to create designs that are better than the best designed intelligently created by the best human experts. For example there was one project that evolved a jet engine design that was better and more efficient than the best jet engine ever designed by humans. Even a small increase in effiency in jet engines will save millions of gallons of fuel and millions of dollars per year. In fact more than half of all Fortune 500 companies harness the power digital evolution in one area or another. There's even one company running evolution in an "automated invention machine". This automated invention machine independantly "re-discovered" a few dozen existing patented inventions, and has produced a bunch of entire novel inventions (which the company patents).

If you are looking at the "inadaquacy of evolution" as evidence of God, I think you are looking in the wrong place, and I think you are selling God short. To follow that path is to persue a God Of The Gaps.

Peopel once looked up at rainbows and said "Wow, how is that possible?". And the answer was "I dunno, I don't understand it and it seems impossib

Also available on Bittorrent

They are relying on the so-called Voter Vault, a computer at GOP headquarters loaded with voting history and consumer information that can be used to "micro-target" voters. By analyzing such bits of data as what magazines the members of a household subscribe to, how many children they have, what types of cars they drive and what churches they attend, the program can pinpoint who is most likely to be open to a Republican appeal.

The sociopathic view of depersonalized action, unfortunately, doesn't always hold water. First, consider a few responses that you might pull out of a freshman's psycholgy/sociology textbook.

1971 Stanford prison experiment ( http://www.prisonexp.org/ )
Milgram "shock" experiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment )
Third Wave experiment ( http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psycholog y/Frank/Thirdwave.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave )
Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment ( http://www.janeelliott.com/, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divi ded/ )
Kitty Genovese case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese)
Bystander effect ( http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psy ch/latane_bystand.html )

These experiments strongly suggest that average people have the capacity to be phenomenally callous, vicious, and even violent when they are exposed to minimally appropriate (inappropriate?) circumstances.

Now, let's put the "spammer" case into focus, since I'm playing the devil's advocate anyway. Let's say that you and a squad of 5-6 techies and other vigilantes get together and start doing the internet research, paper-mining, and footwork necessary to track a couple of these lumps of simian excrement down. After somewhere between 3 and 8 months of free time spent looking for Mr. Hub, you finally sift past a couple layers of zombie networks and brain-dead script weenies to find someone in charge of a spam network, and -- let's play pretend -- the jerk is actually living in a semi-civilized nation. You and a couple beefy associates hop a plane, arrange room and board, then drop by the slum-side cyber sweat-shop and server farm the jerk is living out of. You corner him and haul him in. Again, let's be idealistic and say the police/feds/whatever accept your citizen's arrest prima facie and hold him while they check out the case against him (using your research, no less). A month goes by; you're an expert witness for the case, so you're stuck waiting around for a summons to go to court (which you're happy to comply with). The docket rolls around, and you hop a plane again, carrying a freshly-ironed suit. You show up, and lo and behold, Mr. Hub's pond-scum attorney found a way for him to duck punishment without giving you so much as a chance to say "your Honor." Out the door his smirking face goes. Now, you know that Mr. Hub's going to vanish within a day into some mole warren and pop up a week later in No-juristan doing the same garbage all over again. Now, you have a few options:

A) Curse the wretchedly backward system that let Hub go. Optionally, lobby for legal reform (if you have local citizenship/contacts). Hope to latch onto a bureaucrat/politician savvy enough to recognize the difference between a modem and a mouse and fresh enough to call for change.
B) Try to catch Mr. Hub in the act again, praying you can snag him in a jurisdiction that gives a crap. Good luck catching him red-handed in such a place.
C) Try to find a new Mr. Hub and nail this one for dealing dope/missing taxes/breaking click-through EULAs.
D) Wire Chet and Steiger credit for plane tickets, corner Mr. Hub the instant he jumps jurisdiction, and put his fingers through a meat grinder/throw his (be creative) into a pig sty/"beat him up with a baseball bat" with the understanding that if he comes within three degrees of contact of an SMTP server you'll be back faster than a Google search f

The show was a NOVA episode called "The Trillion Dollar Bet". Link here. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stockmarket/ Scroll down and you'll find links to the Black-Scholes model that LTCM was using.

Found it: it was Nova: "Trillion Dollar Bet". Here's the transcript.