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You're kidding... right?

It's funny you should mention PBS programs while making this statement. If MTV ain't about promulgating rampant consumerism, nothing is.

I'll reply to this becuse it reminds me of an article done by Cringley which y'all might remember... Roll your won DSL. According to him there should be some "dry pairs" that the telco's sould be able to lease as long as you ask right. But why should i tell you about that when you can read it here. you might also snoop around his site a little more as he seems to be just a little interested in net connections through (over?) thick and thin.

I'll reply to this becuse it reminds me of an article done by Cringley which y'all might remember... Roll your won DSL. According to him there should be some "dry pairs" that the telco's sould be able to lease as long as you ask right. But why should i tell you about that when you can read it here. you might also snoop around his site a little more as he seems to be just a little interested in net connections through (over?) thick and thin.

Yah well... SMTP was great in the early days of the internet. Why, if I wanted to send an email to my prof, i just did it. There was no point in forging headers -- I had nothing to sell. There were no websites or commercial venture on the 'net at all. It existed solely for idea echange between acedemics and acedemic wannabes. We definately need a micro-payment/postage system a-la this.

well, somtimes the truth is stranger than any (bad) sci-fi. ;-)
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In 1974, calculators were the hot item in consumer electronics. A little calculator company in Albuquerque was stuggling to compete, but a price war threatened to bankrupt it. Its owner, research engineer Ed Roberts, determined to make it all or nothing. He decided to build a small computer based on the recently developed, inexpensive microprocessors from Intel, and sell it to electronics hobbyists at the amazingly low price of about $500.

Roberts called his computer the Altair 8800 and offered it as a kit. It got a good press splash, featured on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January of 1975. The day the magazine came out, five people called Roberts about the computer; at the end of the week he was getting 30 calls a day. After a couple of weeks, his bank account had fattened and it didn't look like he'd go out of business after all. He'd taken out a loan to develop the Altair and had told the skeptical loan officer he expected to sell about 800 machines a year.

The Altair didn't actually do much as a computer. It didn't have a screen or a keyboard or any software. But it filled a hole. It was the very first personal computer to be produced in fairly high quantity. The larger computer companies were busy developing mainframes and improving computer systems for industry, and couldn't really see why anyone would want a home computer. They also failed to see the implications of the new microprocessors that were small and cheap.

Users had to program Altair in machine code using toggle switches. A Harvard student and his friend, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, realized Altair would be a lot better if users could program it in BASIC, a popular, easy-to-use computer language, instead of machine code. The enterprising pair called Roberts and offered to develop a BASIC interpreter for the Altair. He agreed and within six weeks bought the program from Gates and Allen. He hired Allen as software developer. Allen and Gates later established Microsoft Corporation.

Altair sparked an entire industry, as new personal computer companies popped up in its wake. One of these companies was the creation of a hobbyist who couldn't afford an Altair kit, so he created his own from scratch. Stephen Wozniak polished up his creation in 1976. With his friend Steve Jobs, he began to sell it and then improve it. In 1977, they introduced Apple II and made Apple Computer Company the fastest growing business in American history.

In 1977 Ed Roberts sold his company. Two years later, like many others entering the volatile market, it had folded. In 1981, IBM entered the fray with its own personal computer, the PC, which became Apple's biggest competitor. From a do-or-die business venture in the mid 1970s, the personal computer evolved from a sophisticated toy for electronics enthusiasts to an even more sophisticated -- but easier to use -- household and workplace commodity.

>You can be arrested for a crime, but you can't be arrested for a violation.

BULLSHIT.

Which American president was ARRESTED for speeding?

I'll hint you one: Ulysses S. Grant.

Don't talk about things like this unless you have a clue.

>Same thing with parking tickets, disturbing the peace, driving without a license or without insurance, that kind of thing.

Huh? Protestors are jailed for disturbing the peace all the time. You are really talking out of your ass. Joe the Turk, for instance, was arrested 57 times for disturbing the peace.

I'm not even going to bother with your other points, since none of them are serious enough to warrant arrest anyways. A police officer would have to be honestly insane to book someone for parking their car, considering we have tow trucks and cops are allowed to use them.

>If you seriously think "just about everyone I know" constitutes a useful sample of society, then you're even dumber than I thought.

Okay, apart from yourself, tell me someone who HASN'T violated copyright law?

I'm waiting...

>So what you're saying is that because the laws fail to deter EVERYONE, we should get rid of the laws. Right?

No, he's saying, like me, that laws that don't work require reform. He didn't say anything like what you're saying. In fact, I'd go as far as to say you're now libelling that poor slashdotter.

>Yup. Even dumber than I thought.

Yup, you are.

>Hell, I'll bet you wouldn't even know how to break the DMCA if you wanted to. Seriously. Do you know what the DMCA prohibits? Do you know how to break it?

Let's see, it prohibits me from using my DVD player on my expensive projection TV. To break it, I would load the hack CD into my Apex DVD player to turn off macrovision.

>Most people drive safely most of the time

My point exactly (and I said it a LONG time ago). The fact that the speed limits are too low are an indication of a broken the law.

>Since we have records that clearly illustrate that highway fatalities are linked to speed limits

We do? Show me them.

Oh, that's right, they'll illustrate that high speed driving is linked with highway fatalities, not speed limits. Can you not see the difference between a reccomended/lawful limit and a person's free will? You sound like a dictator.

Next thing you'll say is that computers cause heart attacks. It isn't the computer, it's the lazy ass operating it.

You continue to commit the fallacy of correlation. Read about it and please stop doing it, because it's annoying the hell out of us. Plus you're looking childish when you do it.

>So now you're saying that we need stricter laws (or stricter enforcement of existing laws) to deal with the IP theft problem. Man, you're just all over the map here.

I think he's saying we need reformed laws. That doesn't mean stricter, it means better. How difficult is that to understand.

And stop saying that someone is saying something when they haven't said it in their quote. It's libel, and more importantly, it really makes you look like an idiot.

Alan alda has a great show about aibo soccer in his scientific frontier show.

For those in the Pittsbrugh area, this weekend is the the first RoboCup American Open on the campus of CMU. It's offical website is americanopen03.org. I first heard about these robot soccer tournaments from Alan Alda's Sientific American Frontiers PBS show. I hope to catch tomorrow's events and matches. I'll be wearing a blue UNC ball cap and taking pictures if you'd like to say "hello".

GeekLiving

Scientific American Frontiers did an interesting piece on how learning "The Knowledge" produces a physiological change in the brain. Studies have shown that the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with memory and navigation, grows larger during the several years required to become a cabbie.

I was struck by the last link in the Cringely article others have mentioned ( We've Been Framed! ): 1968 NLS demo, which has realplayer clips of this 90 minute demo of the NLS system.

NLS allowed you to create documents which linked to other documents or content, create heirarchical document structures which could expand or collapse, and even was designed to interface with ARPAnet -- the demo shows a program designed to show a list of networks, what services were available on each, their various protocals, etc...

Viewing this really makes clear the debt we owe to our predecessors. So many "innovations" today are simply inevitable considering the work done by our predecessors -- somtimes more than one generation removed!

Does it make any sence to reward or even allow overly-broad patents, especially where there is no concrete implementation or prototype? It would seem that a criteria for gaining a patent should be some repayment of the debt owed to our predecessors -- some tangible contribution back to humanity for the next generation of innovation. Otherwise, you simply encourage people to file patents on things that will be inevitably produced or invented by someone else -- you do *no* work, then collect.

I recall reading about a geneticist who had done some remarkable research, made a name for himself, etc, but no one could replicate his work. It later came out that he merely faked his results, as it was clear to him that someone else would make the break-throughs eventually, and substantiate his work. Not too dissimilar to the patent situation, IMHO.

So, I'd like to see a requirement for patents which mandates a workable prototype or some concrecte research which can eventually be given back to humanity to repay our debt to our predecessors.

Robert X. Cringely, the PBS Tech columnist, has already refuted this patent. See his article: "We've been framed."

Robert X. Cringely, the PBS Tech columnist, has already refuted this patent. See his article: "We've been framed."

As Jonathan Miller once said,

in the U.S. they have two parties, just as we [in England] have two parties. They have the Republican party, which is like our Conservative party. And they have the Democratic party, which is like our Conservative party.

I'm not sure what to make of your statement that you're concerned more with criminal than civil litigation. This whole thread was a about civil matters (California's laws on implied warranties). As to criminal matters, local judges and juries in the South in the 1960s accurately reflected racist community values and exonerated some awful murderers and terrorists, some of whom took advantage of the Constitutional protection against double jeopardy and sold the stories of their brutal acts to the press.

If you think this is all ancient history, look at what local judge Edward Self did in Tulia Texas. When rogue cop Tom Coleman framed about 15% of the black population of Tulia Texas for selling cocaine in 1999 (one 57 year old hog farmer was sentenced to 99 years), Judge Self refused to admit evidence introduced by defense lawyers that demonstrated a pattern of deceit and shoddy police work by Detective Coleman. Later Judge Self lied about his refusal to admit this evidence and despite being caught lying and forced to recuse himself from appeals of the Tulia cases, Judge Self was re-elected. This spring, the cases were re-opened by higher authorities who don't have to stand for election in Tulia. Detective Coleman has been charged with three counts of aggravated perjury and all the convictions are being vacated. The State of Texas is preparing to pay the victims up to $3000 for each year they wrongfully spent in prison.

Before you get too enamored of direct local democracy, I would recommend re-reading Federalist X on the danger of faction and the tyranny of the majority. This spring, people farther removed from the local level got involved and

So Frontline has a great 52 min show on this exact thing - viewable on line! (Personally, I copy out the links in the html and watch it in RealPlayer or Quicktime, but whatever suits ya..) It's called Cyberwar. Interviews with white house/govt types along with a cracker and an M$ guy. It's got more of a 'war' slant, but nonetheless, pretty relevant. Check it out here

Ah, gotta love Frontline..

What I find more interesting is that NO ONE has said anything about Nicola Tesla. While I don't think he invisioned microwaves, he DID invision, and bascially PREDICT electricity without wires, and spend a good deal of his life working toward this. His ideas were both out of time(r) and often wrong, but his foresight was amazing.

Once again, he has been redeamed in his belief that it could be done. While some of his claims are a bit overstated, the majority of his work was so advanced, he deserves the name "man out of time", which is also an excellent book about him by Margaret Cheney.

If you haven't read enough or really know who Nicola Tesla is, here are some misc. links about him, including his patents. (Not to be confused with the very excellent band named Tesla.)

Enjoy the links, at least until they are slashdotted.

"Here is the core argument: There are a thousand Open Source projects that get started out of need or fun, are maintained for awhile for fame, then get abandoned because there is no reason to go on. Eventually, the programmers come to understand that "users" are people who yell at you to fix stuff. So Open Source is inherently flawed. It only works because otherwise unknown programmers can get 15 minutes of fame using the Internet as low-barrier entry into introducing their skill to the world. Since they are introverted nobodies, getting a few emails from unknown users that say "good job!" feels great. But in time, most Open Source projects grind to a halt. The ones that survive are projects like Linux and Apache that have substantial involvement by PAID engineers. One could argue, in fact, that the idea of Open Source software being created by volunteers is a misnomer. Even Linus Torvalds is paid by Transmeta to be the God of Linux."

From Cringely's latest article

Anyone looking into this should take a look at what Cringely refers to as a "dry copper pair"--basically, it's a direct phone line connection (comes with no dial tone or internet access; it's just a private party on each end) roughly equivelant to a T1. In other words, like a big long piece of cat-5 that can be run underground pretty damn far.

Re: Return to Castle Wolfenstein

The film, much like the game, will follow a highly decorated Army Ranger who is recruited into the Office of Secret Actions and tasked with escaping and then returning to Castle Wolfenstein in an attempt to thwart occult and genetic experiments being conducted there by Nazis.

Um, isn't that a bit of an anachronism? Watson and Crick (and Franklin) didn't really figure out DNA until 1953.

Teller apolitical? You must be mad. If you read the Oppenheimer trial transcripts, it's quite clear that the impetus for the H-bomb was the "Russian device" not research for research sake.

Similarly, he was the champion of Reagan's favorite toy, the "Star Wars" missle system, again, hardly a pure research project.

His plan for nuking the coastline of Alaska, in order to make new harbors, might have been research, but it certainly wasn't a good idea, and it's that kind of enthusiasm for the bomb that's given him a reputation.

I'd go to the site, but Showtime apparently thinks the internet works like 1920's telephone service. The actual episode in question is one of my favourites.

I have that episode (actually, all of them) handy. I'll present some quotes to help you out:

Charles Margulis, Greenpeace GE specialist: "We're concerned that Genetically Engineered food is a disaster waiting to happen."
"Human beings have never before created lifeforms (plants) in the laboratory and released them into the environment and nobody knows what's going to happen in the long-term either in the environment or in our diets."

Penn: "Created lifeforms, disaster waiting to happen, that's Bullshit! These greenpeace dudes want us to believe that GE crops will ruin other crops and harm any person or animal that eats these foods."

Norman Borlaug: "Producing food for 6.2 billion people, adding a population of 80 million more a year is not simple. We had better develop an ever improved science and technology including the new modern technology to produce the food that is needed for today".

Norman Borlaug: "We're 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear." (Regarding organic only foods)

Juliano, Raw Food Chef: "A tortilla is made in a dingy, dirty factory by some dude who hates his job, boss, life, and you. And sends that hate into the food, and you eat it and send it to the center of your core being."

Penn: "Even if this nut had some odd fruit that had grown wild somewhere, it was delivered to him on a truck, it was kept fresh through refrigeration, he washed it in his sink alongside his lettuce tortilla, where did that water come from? He cut it with a knife and cleaned it up with cloth or paper towel. There is no food or water without technology. NONE. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET A JOB!"

Charles Margulis: "There is no Government requirement that genetically engineered foods be tested in the United States. There's not a single government agency, neither the FDA, USDA, EPA; None of them require genetically engineered foods to be tested for human health effects."

Terry Lomax, professor of botany and plant pathology at Oregon State University: "There are no animal genes in plant crops"

Terry Lomax: "These genetically engineered crops are actually the most highly tested crops that we've ever had. They're regulated by the EPA, the USDA, and the FDA. The EPA regulates them if there's a pesticide involved; The USDA [on] where they're grown and how it will affect the environment, and the FDA for food safety. They go through millions of dollars of testing and many years to be able to be approved as a commercial crop."

Alex Avery, studying global food issues at the Hudson Institute: "The president of Zambia was told by Greenpeace and friends of the earth that the food was poisonous."

Norman Borlaug: "These are utopian people that live on cloud 9 and come into the third world and cause all kinds of confusion and negative impacts on the developing countries"

Penn: "Unless you and yours are starving you need TO SHUT THE FUCK UP".

BTW: Most of the work Norman Borlaug did, for which he was awarded a nobel prize, was done before 1970 (1944, to be accurate). And he's still continuing it, thank God. Oh, and this was the only time Penn got pissed off enough to tell people to shut the fuck up. And I can see why.

Why not donate to help starving people worldwide?

You must admit, if we could genetically protect our immune systems from AIDS, that it would be a good thing really. But who knows...maybe that new immune system wouldn't work against something else...

There are already people who are immune to AIDS. They come from european descent and contain a genetic mutation called Delta32 that scientists figure is a result of the black plague. No adverse affect on those with it (the mutation, not the plague).

a) will breaking it up in to pieces and reassembling them meet the goal, even if the reconstructed mountain is slightly different?
b) do we have the resouces to say get a few million people involved in moving buckets of the moutain parts for say a couple hundred or whatever years?
c) have they decided on a location to move it to, adn could that place be used for a better goal?

Nova had a really great program this week about Rosalind Franklin who did all the crystallography work. Apparently Watson and Crick stole her data and that's what enabled them to come up with the double helix model.

You need to get out more. What you quote is literally true but does translate roughly to power at the same price as has come to have that meaning as well.

No it's not.

Here's an interview with author Michael Pollan, who bought a cow to understand its "life story" and the economics of raising it for profit. It disputes some of the points you raised about antibiotics and the effects of a corn diet.

I don't have figures to dispute your 95%, but the point is that once we figure out how to get the valuable marbling, it's pretty irresistible to go for it. After all, it's a highly competitive business with slim margins.

• African Edventure
• Reaching Beyond Borders
• Africa Overland Network
• How Stuff Works
• Kids' Democracy Project
• On the trail of Emporer Norton
• Emporer Norton's Archives
• The Why Files

From what I have seen of the posts, I can't believe no one has mentioned PBS. There are all kind of educational things on their site for all age groups. As the child grows and becomes more educated, they can still visit the site and leran more. My kids (5 and 7 years old) love the Zoom and cyberchase pages.

I wonder if Oppenheimer would agree. There is also a big difference between developing say a new way to harness the power of sunlight or wind to produce energy for example and researching a virus strain to be used as a potential weapon of mass destruction. After all remember the recent anthrax scare? That came from Utah. I remember a short time after that hearing about some possible missing small pox vials at a university in Texas that were just misplaced. I think that these types of examples are what he is referring to.

There's also http://www.disney.com and http://www.nickjr.com.

I have nieces who are 6 and 8, I'll see what they like to go to.

But I think PBS has some of the best fun educational websites... for children AND adults. They have a spectacular design, loads of content.

Heck, I probably spend as much time on their Frontline as I do on /. I just heard a biopic was being made on pornographer Seymour Butts. If you look for the old show Frontline did called "American Porn" you can see the interesting story on how Mr... Butts is a test case for the State of CA against fisting. Mr Butts on the topic: "You stick four fingers in a person, its fine. You add your thumb in there, it's suddenly a crime." Frontline has tons of interviews, background and expert data.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff. You find out that Ashcroft was planning a big assault on the US porn industry pre-9-11 and all these other bits.

Ok... this post has suddently gone OT. But if adults can get such great mind-piquing webbrowsing, kids will too at PBS.

PS: Donate to your local station. :p

But I think PBS has some of the best fun educational websites... for children AND adults. They have a spectacular design, loads of content.

Heck, I probably spend as much time on their Frontline as I do on /. I just heard a biopic was being made on pornographer Seymour Butts. If you look for the old show Frontline did called "American Porn" you can see the interesting story on how Mr... Butts is a test case for the State of CA against fisting. Mr Butts on the topic: "You stick four fingers in a person, its fine. You add your thumb in there, it's suddenly a crime." Frontline has tons of interviews, background and expert data.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff. You find out that Ashcroft was planning a big assault on the US porn industry pre-9-11 and all these other bits.

Ok... this post has suddently gone OT. But if adults can get such great mind-piquing webbrowsing, kids will too at PBS.

PS: Donate to your local station. :p

For a Nickel I Will; Bob's Ultimate Anti-Spam Solution
By Robert X. Cringely
The Pulpit_March 13, 2003

gewg

Well, If you use the heat dissipation system in those wifi boxes put out by martian.com, then you could stick em in your floors or walls to heat your house. (As suggested by Bob Cringely).
Or you could build a water heater/home server.

...the fault tolerant nature of the cluster is such that if a machine fails, the other machines simply take over its functions. As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus. We have reached the point where we are totally dependent on computers, yet the marginal cost of a computer -- at least for Google -- is nothing. This may be an historical first.

Until these this article and Cringely's, i had no idea Google's sheer size and computing power. i'd like to find a reference for Cringely's article, though, but it is certainly believable.

What, you mean likePBS?

In his weekly spiel, Bob Cringely commented on the Compaq computers that were being removed from government buildings, wondering in comment where they came from since apparently Iraq had none in 1991 and they were supposed to be under an embargo.

I don't know if those facts are right, but Cringely usually checks things out.

Could someone explain which coporations on what?

If you want to engage in civil disobedience, get about 500 people who are willing to go to Walmart at the same time, and each of you walk out of the store with a CD - holding it in the air as you do to broadcast to the world that you going to steal the CD.

Never, ever use the "making an infringing copy is exactly the same as stealing a CD" argument. It's incorrect and misleading. Even if someone believes that copyright law should be abolished, that does not in any way suggest that they are against physical property law. Copyright law and physical property law are totally different things.. If you make an illegal copy of one of my photographs, I still have my original to enjoy and anyone I've given legal copies can still enjoy their copies. If you steal one of those copies, the person who had it long longer can enjoy it. It's an essential difference.

For the sake of all that is good, this is Slashdot, what are you doing here if you're not a nerd. Isn't a traditional trait of nerds an insistence upon accurate, precise speech? Aren't nerds supposed to be against using language to mislead and arguments of emotion over fact?

Now, it you're really interested in using civil disobedience to try and change copyright law, and not interested in encouraging confusion between copyright and physical property, check out Robert X. Cringely's column "Steal This Column" for the proper way.

If you want more on the story of Alto and the products that were born out of it, I suggest watching the third installment of Cringley's "Triumph of the Nerds". You may find the transcripts here

1. Twentieth Century Fox
2. Blue Sky Studios
3. Fox Searchlight Pictures
4. TheStreet.com (partial ownership with New York Times Co.)
5. Healtheon/WebMD Corp. (partial ownership)
6. FOX Broadcasting Company
7. FOX News Channel
8. FOX Kids Network
9. FOX Sports (partial in some markets)
10. The Health Network
11. fX
12. National Geographic's cable channel (50%)
13. Golf Channel
14. TV Guide Channel (44%)
15. 22 Fox affiliated stations
16. British Sky Broadcasting
17. STAR TV (Asia)
18. Fox Sports Radio Network
19. New York Post (U.S.)
20. The Times (U.K.)
21. The Sun (U.K.)
22. News of the World (U.K.)
23. The Australian (Australia)
24. The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
25. The Herald Sun (Australia)
26. The Advertiser (Australia)
27. TV Guide (partial ownership)
28. The Weekly Standard
29. Maximum Golf
30. HarperCollins General Book Group
31. Regan Books
32. Amistad Press
33. William Morrow & Co.
34. Avon Books
35. Los Angeles Dodgers
36. New York Knicks (partial ownership)
37. New York Rangers (partial ownership)
38. Los Angeles Kings (partial ownership)
39. Los Angeles Lakers (partial ownership)
40. Dodger Stadium
41. Staples Center (partial ownership)
42. Madison Square Garden (partial ownership)

PBS has a very informative website outlining The Merchants of Cool -- "a report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teens".

But the most eye-opening part is their section on the Media Giants. It has a huge listing of all the holdings and subsidaries of the largest media giants: News Corp, Vivendi Universal, Sony, AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom.

Check out AOL Time Warner, for instance.

PBS has a very informative website outlining The Merchants of Cool -- "a report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teens".

But the most eye-opening part is their section on the Media Giants. It has a huge listing of all the holdings and subsidaries of the largest media giants: News Corp, Vivendi Universal, Sony, AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom.

Check out AOL Time Warner, for instance.

PBS has a very informative website outlining The Merchants of Cool -- "a report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teens".

But the most eye-opening part is their section on the Media Giants. It has a huge listing of all the holdings and subsidaries of the largest media giants: News Corp, Vivendi Universal, Sony, AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom.

Check out AOL Time Warner, for instance.

This site may have been up for a while, although I heard through the grapevine that most of the documents available here have not been previously available online and were recently added. But I'll add that the date that this site went online is probably less important than the events surrounding it. That said, I believe that it is important to examine our actions and the actions of our leaders within the context of our historical roots. Reading the transcripts of documents such as the Bill of Rights gives one a focal point from which the actions of our leaders, past and present, may be sensibly evaluated. That's just one opinion, however, and we all have a right to our opinion, and to voice that opinion...

Who designed the Tacoma Narrows bridge? The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkway? The De Havilland Comet 1? The Ocean Ranger oil rig? The L'Ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, Connecticut? Pre-Challenger solid rocket boosters? Hubble space telescope optics? The Cypress Structure (collapsed in 1989 Loma Prieta eauthquake)?

I knew I should have put a caveat in there

Ok 99.99999% reliable. In most of the cases you mention the reason for failure was encountering a novel method of failure, that hadn't been seen before which is quite rightly the engineers fault for not anticipating it or basic human error which will happen in any situation, but should still be designed against by the good engineer.

Tacoma Narrows bridge - One of first examples of resonance in a large structure caused by wind. Regency hotel Walkway - Predominantly human error in communication coupled with a poor engineering decision Ocean Ranger rig - Engineering design coupled with human incompetance and poor safety routines. DeHavilland Comet- New intensity of cyclic stress strain loading in 1st commercial jet plane.L'ambiance Plaza Generally poor design in a (fairly) new technique.Rocket boostersDesign and checking failure on a massively complex project, obviously pushing the boundries. Hubble optics Not realy in the same catagory, but poor checking procedure, again pushing the envelope.Cypress StructureOver zealous engineers working to code, in an environment they didn't realy understand. Also a relatively novel construction when built.

I know it's not an excuse to say 'we didn't know it worked like that we'll do it better next time'. Compared to the number of structures built the number of failures is very small, engineers have a high level of training to keep it that way. It's a shame that (in the UK at least) we tend to sell our services cheap which doesn't reflect on the importance and responcibilty that we have. When individual code monkeys can get sued for the money a company lost due to there poor code, then they'll make themselves into engineers.

C'mon skeptics, put your money where your mouth is.

You obviously have never heard of James Randi. He (and his foundation) have offered a $1,000,000 prize to anyone who can scientifically prove claims of the paranormal.

Guess what. Nobody has ever collected. In fact, nobody has ever passed a preliminary screening test for the prize.

I don't have a copy of Randi's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural with me at work, but I'm sure there's an entry about cattle mutilations. You might borrow that book from the library sometime (or any of Randi's other books, or a tape of his PBS Nova special). It would definitely give you some perspective, even if it didn't answer your questions about dead bovines.

Skeptics are skeptical because we believe that there are a set of rules to follow when observing phenomena and formulating explainations for them. The burden of proof lies with those who wish to believe. Just because I can't readily provide a rational explanation for dead cattle doesn't mean that "aliens must have done it." If that sounds like a cop-out, consider it this way: just because I can't provide a rational explanation of how a magician appears to levitate somebody on stage doesn't mean that he has supernatural powers. Most of us know that magicians don't have super-powers, yet most of us can't explain how their tricks work (at least, the good ones).

Add to that the fact that many people want to believe in the supernatural, even if they're proven wrong! Many people still believe that crop circles are made by visitors from another world, even though it has been shown (many times!) that all you need is a 2x4, some surveyor's tape, a few buddies, and 6 hours in the dark.

So skeptics aren't negative, they're just less easily excited. That may make them seem like party-poopers, but it's really just the fact that many people are waaaaaaaay too willing to believe.

There's your answer. They don't want people skipping commercials, and they want full control over rescheduling.