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I think that product placement in Bladerunner was done artfully and tastefully without the least bit distraction to the movie.

However, times are changing. Some product placements are so glaring that I pause to myself and think "hey, wait, they are trying to sell me something here." I'm quite sure that the line will be crossed increasingly more.

For a telling perspective on this see the Frontline show The Persuaders.

Extremely revealing, I came away with a sense of hopelessness about where we are headed.

We are technically at war with North Korea, and have been for 50 years now. The North Koreans are a major source of ballistic missile proliferation as they continue to develop and export a range of sophisticated missiles to nations such as Iran and Yemen. They have tested components for a missile capable of reaching the United States. They either have, or are close to having nuclear weapons. The North Koreas bought 12 decommissioned Soviet submarines and have used them to advance their technology and may deploy weapons on them.

North Korea regularly threatens to attack the United States.

To get a sense of the nature of the North Korean government you can just look at how they treat: orphans, the US deserver who just returned after 40 years, the Japanese they kidnapped to teach their spies, and last, but not least, the victims of their gulag.

The North Koreans could teach lessons to the Iraqi Information Minister. They deny having dug the tunnels into South Korea, some of which are big enough to drive vehicles. (A handy thing if you were of a mind to invade the South, no?) They no doubt also deny their regular attempts to infiltrate groups of agents into South Korea.

The North Korean Army had million soldiers in it in 1992. The North Koreans have been willing to starve the population, significant numbers to death, in order to sustain the army.

North Korea is a designated member of the "Axis of Evil."

They seem like a bunch you might want to protect yourself against.

perhaps we need an X prise for it to bring the price down and get it done now???

I'm a tax payer..... I don't approve of such a spending of money, expeciall considering such money and effort could be better spent on What the World Really Wants and as such reduce the need for anti-terrorism terrorism.....

People do things for reasons, even if they have to borrow or take the reason from others like this one for 9/11"... so lets instead simply remove the reasons and excuses that only support such terrorism groups to grow...

So yeah, 20 years and hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars can most certainly be better spent...than building a government owned and controlled private internet payed for by those not allowed to use it...

Wow.
Just... wow.

OK, I don't know where you went to school or what they taught you, but do you know what they had before we fucked the middle east over?

Iraq had a Christian prime minister. Openly Christian. Back then, they didn't kill people for practicing their faith. Women equal rights with men, and could hold jobs, vote, and even run for office.

And then we had the UN start sanctioning Iraq. We set off political and religious turmoil in the region that would burn for decades just to try and counter Saddam's growing influence (not to mention that WE put the bastard there in the first place). Now fundie Muslims are in power, and everyone around the world is worse for it.

As for your "do you think they would care" bit of WTFery, take a real hard look at Bush's elite "base" as he calls them. I bet every one of those rich business owners were quite free to go and vote, and most certainly they voted for Bush this year.

You mean like this guy?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/sports/jewell_10-28 .html

To jmcmunn, who posted above, I would say you are incorrect, just because they released Mr. Jewell's name, they weren't "pretty sure about this one."

Vip

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.

It's sad that his prediction just before his death that someone else would reap the credit & rewards for his work and he'd be forgotten pretty much came true. While his paddle design was crude I believe he would have come up with the "paddle wheel" on his own. Looking at his drawings he was very, very close. Of course his idea of placing a steam engine on a boat was revolutionary.

If he had only chosen to the work the Hudson instead of the Delaware IMO he would have earned the money needed to continue his work (something the man clearly loved) and history would be different. But working the Delaware finacially was a poor choice.

As inventors go he was a great one.

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?

Not too long ago, there was a slashdot article of an interview with David Crosby on Frontline.

He talked about how at some point the tone and attitude of big music changed from being supportive and developing of young talent for the long term to being adverserial and short term profit minded.

I think this economist article is the conclusion and proof of what he was talking about, his thoughts were mostly anecdotal without concrete evidence. From the interview:

"When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. ... The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died."
SRC: PBS Frontline

The result of this commercialization and 'selling out' resulted in companies the likes of Sony, BMG, EMI, etc. run by lawyers and accountants. Of course, their first instinct when faced with new technology and a threat is to sue the pants of grandmas and 12 year olds. Way to go corporate America!!!

I'm gonna apologize for my attitude, for this next part but... I got karma to burn.

Evidently, having some lawyer or accountant run a business may just well run it into the ground. There is apparently no substitute, no matter how ivy or expensive your degree may be, for heart and really appreciating the business you work with or work in. Being in it for money will eventually sink the ship. It's love of music that brings out the great music, and brings it to the people, not lawsuits, not cheap thrills turned into overnight successes with the help of Payola (to radio stations -- ahem Clear Channel), over promotion and slick advertising (ahem -- MTV).

I hope Elliot Spitzer rips these companies and the lawyers who run them a new one with his Payola investigation.

M

You should learn bee dance/

The Guardian was one of the few papers to report on the war critically and produced excellent articals such as this one.
There wasn't one single American newspaper that reported on the facts critically. Even the New York times admits this.

Sure there are re-releases today still but the numbers dwarf in comparison to the beginning to 90's. This was a point brought up during PBS Frontline "The Way the Music Died" documentary on the troubles of the music industry. I seem to remember that Frontline pointed out that sales relative to new albums have actually gone up. But the overall sales have gone down because older albums sales have decline greatly. This Economist report doesn't address this point.

find it funny that foreiners liked clinton and he didn't sign any of those treaties either. Actually, what most foreigners are ignorant of is that the president cannot sign it unless congress gives him the authority to (for each indevidual treaty).

Incorrect, he signed a number of treaties, they were just either not ratified, or rejected by GWB. He (Clinton) didn't have support of the senate which was and still is Republican controlled.

"The United States ratified the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child on February 16, 1995. However, in 2000 when the U.N. attempted to pass the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts, the United States raised strong objections and still refuses to ratify it. President Clinton signed the Protocol in May 2000, but the Republican-dominated Senate did not ratify it, raising the objections that the treaty undermines the rights of parents and is unfair to the U.S., since the U.S. currently recruits and deploys 17 year-olds for service. The Bush Administration is taking no action on ratification."

http://www.clw.org/control/bushunilateral.html

"On Dec. 31, 2000, Bill Clinton signed the Rome agreement creating an International Criminal Court. He waited until almost the last permissible moment to affix the United States to the agreement even though he did not, he said, agree with its contents."

"President George W. Bush, recognizing the consequences of treating the U.S. signature so frivolously, has instructed the State Department to make clear the United States has no intention of being bound by the signature by informing the United Nations of the decision."

http://www.cei.org/utils/printer.cfm?AID=3312

"The current treaty at issue is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, first opened for signatures in 1996. This multilateral agreement bans all nuclear tests above and below the Earth's surface. The treaty also established a worldwide monitoring system to check air, water and soil for signals that someone set off a nuclear explosion. While President Clinton signed the treaty, in 1999, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it."

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/nucleartreaties.ht ml

"Although President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, mandating a reduction in carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012, a 2001 State Department memo rejected the protocol on the basis that it would harm the US economy and exempt developing countries from reduction requirements. Of industrialized states, only the US, Australia and Israel haven't ratified the protocol. The US did ratify the UNFCCC, but has not complied"

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/un/2003/treatyt able.htm

Likely there is more (thats enough for today, but I see a recurring theme). It seems pretty much like his hands were tied.

And before you get busy defending McWane, read the rest of the story about ACIPO, that gets the same or better results without killing their employees.

So what if Haliburton and other oil (now energy) companies got the contracts to build the nuclear power plants?

If you watch the PBS documentary Meltdown at Three Mile Island you will see a bunch of plant workers running around in the background of the news footage. Their jackets have "Halliburton" across the back.

Fool me once, shame on me ...

--

Even though I'm a Bush-voting Republican (and proud of it!) and think the French are mainly cheese-eating surrender monkeys, I'll give France one thing: they have the best nuclear power program in the world.

Unlike the US which went with several designs for nuclear reactors, none of which was quite like the other, the French bought the design for Pressurized Water Reactors from Westinghouse in the US and built 56 reactors, all of the same design and all using interchangable parts and systems. That way problems in one reactor can be fixed systemwide using the same techniques.

France gets over 75% of their power from cheap nuclear energy. Electric power in France from nuclear sources is about 3 Euro cents/kWh, which is very competitive and less than half of the US average cost for electricity.

France reprocesses used nuclear fuel to create new fuel and maximize efficiency. That produces less waste and increases overall efficiency. The French also found that it's psychologically better to say that waste is being "stocked" rather than disposed of.

I don't give France credit for much, but the way in which the French have run their nuclear program is a model for the rest of the world. France is far less dependent on foreign energy for power than most countries, and their costs are lower - and there has not been a major nuclear accident in France since the program began.

If we did something similar with more efficient breeder reactors, we could reduce pollution, reduce energy costs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Besides, we can't let the French beat us, can we?

Be sure to check out this article on a sweet Asterisk implementation.
--
Watch this page for Black Friday Information!

This election was more of an indicator of the sad state of liberal programs currently in schools and inability of the poor to access such an education than anything else. The poor in the South learn their lessons in churches, just as the poor in the Middle-East do. The language they hear it in is different, but the message is startlingly similar. God rules the country, not any Constitution or government.

I won't defend stupid decisions, but I will note that when people are hurting they turn towards religion. Shrub has sold himself as a religious man, and Kerry didn't. A defining and admirable aspect of born again Christianity is that the "sinner" can repent and absolve himself of all past sins by accepting Christ (however defined by the various sects and denominations). The Red states bought that Shrub is reborn. We know better.

I say that the Democratic party's best defense against religious fundamentalism is education. They need to start rebuilding the walls between church and state by winning current court cases and more of them. They need to start attacking at every possible opportunity rather than roll over and take it up the rectum like they have been from groups like Bush's "Swift Boat" Republicans. More importantly, they need to stop alienating the liberals who actually are fighting. The Democrats need to bring themselves back into the Liberal fold where Nader, Moore, and the Green party are waiting for them. They need to start backing up these fighters, instead of distancing themselves from them. The Democrats have forgotten how to fight, and need to start by liberating the minds of the young while the right-wing is busy liberating oil wells from their owners. They've got 2 years before the next elections, and they better have a "moral" center like the Red states do, but in defense of liberty, and not one particular religion.

"A liberal education ... frees a person from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family, and even his nation." -- Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Political Animal

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." - Thomas Jefferson

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... " - Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, Jan 6th, 1816

= 9J =

here you go!

"In addition, Bush (Senior) sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors, and didn't forget to import expertise (From the Middle Eastern Dictators) in election fraud from the region's presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty." - Osama bin Ladin

"If the people have elected those governments in the latest elections, it is because they have fallen prey to the Western media which portray things contrary to what they really are. And while the slogans raised by those regimes call for humanity, justice, and peace, the behavior of their governments is completely the opposite. It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. - Osama, Again"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/history2.ht ml

"Philip Morris is testing its own high-tech cigarette called Accord, which has been described as a cigarette encased in a kazoo-shaped lighter. Consumers buy a $40 kit that includes a battery charger, a puff-activated lighter that holds the cigarette, and a carton of special cigarettes. To smoke the cigarettes, a smoker sucks on the kazoolike box. A microchip senses the puff and sends a burst of heat to the cigarette. The process gives the smoker one drag and does not create ashes or smoke. An illuminated display shows the number of puffs remaining, and the batteries must be recharged after every pack."

The PBS electoral vote map which lets you play with the numbers and provides previous presidential election maps and

The LA Times Electoral Vote Trackerwhich also lets you switch each state's results as well as providing more info on polls plus how each state went in past elections by the state rather than by the year (like the PBS one)

See all you flash bashers, there are some good uses for flash.

= 9J =

= 9J =

not discovery health... least not that I saw. you're probably thinking of the Nova special, "Search for a Safe Cigarette".

There were similar products discussed in there... including the failed smokeless brand Premier and the current reduced smoke Eclipse.

Slashdot is slashdotted, so I can't tell if this was posted correctly before:

Facts you should know before you vote:

If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.

Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.

Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. Books are the major media that are not ad-supported. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books that discuss the corruption of the Bush administration: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Bush's education improvements were at least partly fraud.

I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush: "The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."

Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?

15 of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.

Did you see the network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man the Bush family knows as "Bandar Bush"? Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq? Was it a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?

Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

Is Bush drinking NOW?

George W. Bush's brother was shown in a lawsuit deposition on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes and using government influence to make money. Family values? Neil Bush is different from other relatives of presidents like Billy Carter; he is heavily involved with government corruption and he does his corruption with the help of his family.

The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.

Just finished watching this and I thought it was very interesting. The filmmakers tried very hard to present just the facts without twisting them:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choi ce2004/view/

Facts you should know before you vote:

If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.

Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.

Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. Books are the major media that are not ad-supported. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books that discuss the corruption of the Bush administration: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Bush's education improvements were at least partly fraud.

I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush: "The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."

Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?

15 of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.

Did you see the network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man the Bush family knows as "Bandar Bush"? Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq? Was it a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?

Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?

George W. Bush's brother was shown in a lawsuit deposition on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes and using government influence to make money. Family values? Neil Bush is different from other relatives of presidents like Billy Carter; he is heavily involved with government corruption and he does his corruption with the help of his family.

The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.

Just finished watching this and I thought it was very interesting. The filmmakers tried very hard to present just the facts without twisting them:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choi ce2004/view/

Secondly, remember at the first Republican primary debate? The candidates were all asked to name their favorite philosopher, Bush said "Jesus" because "he changed my life".

Have you seen The Jesus Factor?

I always thought the creationist challenge was how did the focus and lens system + nerve system evolve.

There is a quite cool video here that shows how the lens could have evolved...

- if people knew how much Donald Rumsfeld was directly responsible for the limited number of troops on the ground in Iraq and the interrogation tactics used at Abu Ghraib. see it at PBS's Frontline.

- if people knew that Bush was thinking about Iraq before his election and before 9-11, solely for political gain.

these two thoroughly research points could turn the stomach of even hard line republicans. everyone should realize that this administration has been playing the worst kind of politics by capitalizing on tradgedy and fear beyond normal scaremongering.

And keep all those drives cool; use fans.

It seems to me it should be possible to put another power supply in the case and power the extra drives from that. Most modern BIOS versions allow specifying a delay on the hard drive spin-up. Just put the power-on connector in parallel with the main power supply connector. I don't like Antec cases much, or those from any manufacturer, but some full tower Antec cases have room for a second power supply.

But a case with a lot of drives and a motherboard needs a lot of air-moving equipment.

--
15 of the 19 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.

9/11 hadn't happened yet, George W. Bush hadn't been elected President, John Ashcroft hadn't been appointed Attorney General yet, and the US Government sent armed troops into a house in the middle of the night to snatch away Elian Gonzalez

See Cringely for a well thought out idea along the same lines:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030724. html

I cant imagine how one of the biggest cities on the planet could have clean water as you suggest? I mean obviously they have treatment plants and all, but I've never been to a big polluted city and drinken decent tap water.

I think you're letting your preconceptions cloud your perceptions. There's no reason I can think of why a big city would have worse water than a small town, unless you are talking about people wandering over to the nearest river and fetching their drinking water with a pail. Most of the worst water contamination comes from agricultural and industrial activities that are mainly found in rural and suburban areas, and exacerbated by flat terrain.

Big cities often have much more stringent water quality requirements, more active watchdog groups, and the resources (if only through economies of scale) to apply much more elaborate and effective technology to the problem.

In the case of New York, water is piped from mountains upstate into the city, so in a way you're not really drinking water from NYC at all.

By the way, construction started in 1970 on the legendary Water Tunnel Number Three, a 50-year project (scheduled for completion in 2020 though the first section is in use already) to dig a 6-meter-diameter, 100km-long tunnel that starts over 200 meters below New York City and ends up in the mountains to the north. It's one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects in American history and well worth googling if you're interested in such things.

I read that article.

It was called Battle Plan Under Fire

and the guys's name was U.S. Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper - he gets talked about halfway down the transcript.

Makes you wonder - what would happen if in the next war, a whole bunch of what looks like "Coca Cola" delivery trucks pull up in major cities of the enemies of america, and then the Pres gets on TV and says that if the enemy country doesn't aquesce to demands of oil and abandonment of nuclear weapons programmes, those trucks will blow up at say 1000lbs of TNT each. Closer inspection of the trucks shows that they're highly sophisticated robot drones, monitored from space, with fake drivers, and rigged to explode if tampered with.

Plenty of time to get civilians out of the area, and it would smash things like major factories and what not.

When confronted with using "Terrorist Tactics", the Pres smiles disarmingly and says "Well, we've had it up to here with you. We figured, if you can't beat 'em, become exactly like them."

100 Facts and 1 Opinion

by JUDD LEGUM

[from the November 8, 2004 issue]

Click here to download, circulate and distribute a PDF version of this article.

IRAQ

1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.

Source: American Progress

2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.

Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe

3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.

Source: PBS

4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.

Source: The Washington Post

5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.

Source: globalsecurity.org

6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.

Source: Yahoo News

7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.

Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission

8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.

Source: New York Times

9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.

Source: USA Today

10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, "There was a risk--a real risk--that Sa

Oh, really? Excerpt: How good is America's drug safety system? Since 1997, more than a dozen prescription drugs have been taken off the market due to serious side effects -- in some cases after hundreds of injuries and even deaths have occurred...

It might also be pointed out that the current regulation system is the one that's keeping prices of prescription drugs so high that many people routinely spend more on medication than on their home or vehicle payments.

It might also be pointed out that there is no justification (short of Interstate Commerce Clause) that gives the gov't the ability to regulate in the first place. The ICC wasn't meant to provide this window, as can be seen by the Amendments regarding prohibition. Only after that debacle was it decided that the gov't really did have the power, after all.

Yes, and 80 years later they found his battered and broken body half way up the mountain. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/lost/ There's a moral in that somewhere...

PBS has excellent videos from the program Cracking the Code of Life of the teams (Human Genome Project and private company Celera) that worked on decoding the entire 3 billion sequences of the human genome. It is very worth watching to understand this article.

I'm afraid this totally rocks. This is why Microsoft is so rich... they keep doing things that totally rock. Wow. It greives me to say it ... but wow.

It doesn't matter if Linux can do HDTV over a network and do it better (as if it could). It doesn't matter because Microsoft will be there first for the most people. They'll be there the most. They'll have all the deals locked in from server to client. They'll totally shut out HDTV over IP competition before it gets born. If you read Cringely at all then you know that at least one if not a few Linux hackers have done this type of thing in the small.

But it doesn't matter now. Microsoft is a true kung-foo master. Unless the world changes radically and it becomes illegal to force people to use whatever EULA you want or to force out competition from your market place by using innovative and strategic business deals... Microsoft is unstoppable. It's like a dinosaur. What could stop the dinosaurs?

I think they are doing it as a sort of courtship display. Like Bower birds (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bowerbird/amorous. html) They are displaying to the opposite sex that they have so much disposable income that they can spend it on frivolous things.

It's like a giant rack of antlers. I mean, what fricking good does that do anyone? Well, basically, it looks cool, at least to the people that you are trying to impress.

Obviously, these ricer dudes are not doing this for us.

This has actually been discussed at length in other books

Not to mention it was also discussed in Robert X. Cringley's Triumph of the Nerds.

I was watching an old episode of Triumph of the Nerds yesterday, and they mentioned how Gary Kildall didn't seize the opportunity.

PBS has an excellent timeline that describes the history of the transistor,
'Transistorized! The History of the Invention of the Transisor'.

PBS has a few of their more recent episodes of Nova on their website.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs.html

It's a shame they don't have a better online selection like they do with the Frontline documentaries.

If his performance on CNN makes you love him, check the transcript from when he was on NOW with Bill Moyers...

Take a wildly fanciful trip with me to two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size, Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset on these islands, and their communities are primitive, needing only food and producing only food. Working eight hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that's how things go along. On each island everybody works the prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society is self-sufficient.

Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading outlet, Squanderville.

The citizens of Squanderville are ecstatic about this turn of events, since they can now live their lives free from toil but eat as well as ever. Oh, yes, there's a quid pro quo -- but to the Squanders, it seems harmless: All that the Thrifts want in exchange for their food is Squanderbonds (which are denominated, naturally, in Squanderbucks).

Over time Thriftville accumulates an enormous amount of these bonds, which at their core represent claim checks on the future output of Squanderville. A few pundits in Squanderville smell trouble coming. They foresee that for the Squanders both to eat and to pay off -- or simply service -- the debt they're piling up will eventually require them to work more than eight hours a day. But the residents of Squanderville are in no mood to listen to such doomsaying.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Thriftville begin to get nervous. Just how good, they ask, are the IOUs of a shiftless island? So the Thrifts change strategy: Though they continue to hold some bonds, they sell most of them to Squanderville residents for Squanderbucks and use the proceeds to buy Squanderville land. And eventually the Thrifts own all of Squanderville.

At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight hours a day in order to eat -- they have nothing left to trade -- but must also work additional hours to service their debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase rather than conquest.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is a good start.
For no-holds-barred expose' nothing touches NOW with Bill Moyers--stuff no other video broadcast outlet will air (e.g., Michael Powell & the FCC. ABC mentioned it momentarily--once--at 3:30AM).

gewg_