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FYI, it may be "Security Theater", but the National Guard was not patrolling with unload weapons. This was proven somewhat humorously when a guardsman shot himself in the butt with his 9mm, as described here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2002/01/03/MN117862.DTL&type=print able

In related news, humans still can't seem to bridges with any reliable schedule or budget. Despite the fact that bridges have been built probably since the dawn of man, and we've been building suspension bridges for at least 500 years.

And before anyone starts ranting about more coal... California has all but outlawed new coal power plants. Natural gas is much more likely, as well as increased solar and wind production... California is the PERFECT area for large-scale utilization of both, hence Sterling Systems/Edison's plans to build or the largest solar power plant in the world in California.

Which has pushed all the new coal plants into other Western states who then transmit their power back to California. Coal power is still by far the cheapest way to go, even when you have to move the power source further from the consumers. Until other states adopt similar regulations or California stops importing electricity from coal plants, the effects of California's regulations will remain very small.

Some further reading: Western Resource Advocates (read the excellent study at the bottom) and SFGate.com

myRedbook is a website at the center of a sex-trafficking scandal in San Francisco. myRedbook is an online marketplace where customers hook up with prostitutes working in and around Silicon Valley. The prostitutes come from a variety of countries and have a wide range of ages.

Also, in a discussion forum provided by myRedbook, many customers talk about the quality of prostitution services (e.g., hand job, blow job, and full-sexual intercourse) sold at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater. myRedbook maintains reviews of the prostitutes who work at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater, located at 895 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco.

If you visit the myRedbook website, take pains to remember that myRedbook actively records and traces Internet-Protocol (IP) addresses in order to defeat law enforcement. Your privacy may be compromised.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/ 12/28/APPLE.TMP

...British newspaper reported that CEO Steve Jobs received 7.5 million stock options in 2001 without getting required approval from the company's board.

The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that records were later falsified to indicate that directors had OKd the grant to Jobs. Apple will disclose the false records in a regulatory filing by Friday, according to the newspaper.

If true, what a loser. Has hundreds of millions, but that was obviously not enough for him. To think he would falsify records to get just few million more... pathetic.

Yeah, right.

And I'll be travelling to the spaceport in my helicar.

I'm glad they've figured out how to mix the fuel, though. I've heard that glitches can occur when rocket fuel isn't mixed well.

A $25,000 reward is offered for information leading to the location of Nina Reiser. Police ask anyone with information to contact Oakland homicide investigators at (510) 238-3821 or a police tip line at (510) 637-0298.

Also found inside the car...two books: "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," by David Simon, about the Baltimore police homicide squad, and "Masterpieces of Murder," by Jonathan Goodman, about notorious murder cases.

From the evidence it doesn't look like hes very innocent.

Blood found in his mother's house and a sleeping bag found in his car match his former wife's

Prior history of aggression toward her which led to a restraining order.

A motive in that he has been trying to get custody of his children and they will not give them to him.

And of course this gem from SFgate:

Hans Reiser's Honda was missing its front passenger seat when police seized it Sept. 19, Cavness testified in an Oakland courtroom. After technicians removed the carpeting from the front seat area, they noticed that the floorboard had been saturated with water, Cavness said.

Inside the car, police found a 40-piece socket set, Cavness said. The tools appeared to have been used to remove four bolts that had been used to attach the passenger seat to the floor, she said.

Also found inside the car, according to police, was a roll of trash bags, masking tape, a siphon pump, absorbent towels and two books: "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," by David Simon, about the Baltimore police homicide squad, and "Masterpieces of Murder," by Jonathan Goodman, about notorious murder cases.


All in all, I'd say its not looking good for him.

And sure enough, a little digging shows a significant history of exactly this error in past studies.
Here's and example from March:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 06/03/30/MNGMTI0B3U1.DTL

here...

http://www.walmart.com/cservice/cu_commentsonline. gsp?cu_heading=8

Here's what I sent to them.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/12/12/MNG8TMU1KQ1.DTL

So you haven't received any complaints about this game?

Well here's one. I find this totally offensive. For a company with such a high profile to be peddling crap like this and feeding the fires of racial and religious intolerance is totally unacceptable and completely reprehensible.

You have to be out of your minds to think this is a good way to make money. You can be sure you're never going to see a single dollar from my wallet not for this product or any other that you might choose to sell from here on. I'm sure there's thousands more reading this article and your response to it that are reacting the same way.

Perhaps you can buy the rights to sell dvds of the OJ interview "if i did it" and package it with this game as the ultimate bad taste christmas gift set.

The logging road that James Kim drove down when his family got lost in the mountains of southern Oregon was supposed to be secured by a locked gate, but someone cut the lock in recent weeks, authorities said Friday.

A. Houses in San Francisco are a bad investment. Housing prices are at a peak level and are dropping. Buying a house in that market now is stupid.

B. Millions do not have the financial resources to buy a house in the Bay Area but live quite happy lives.

C. Yes, you can buy a house in SF with an income of 100k and still be fine.

The average price of a house in the Bay Area is 611k (5k less than a year ago).
A 30 year mortgage can be had at 5.58%
At 30 years that mortgage would be $3499.92 / month if 100% financed.
The yearly cost of the payments would be $41999.04
Over the term of the loan you would pay $1259971.20

The average rental price in the Bay Area is $1450.00
The 30 year cost of this rent is $509400.00

The cost savings in renting vs. buying a house in SF is $750571.20, or $139571.20 more than the value of the house you don't have to sell (assuming it keeps it's value).

A. Houses in San Francisco are a bad investment. Housing prices are at a peak level and are dropping. Buying a house in that market now is stupid.

B. Millions do not have the financial resources to buy a house in the Bay Area but live quite happy lives.

C. Yes, you can buy a house in SF with an income of 100k and still be fine.

The average price of a house in the Bay Area is 611k (5k less than a year ago).
A 30 year mortgage can be had at 5.58%
At 30 years that mortgage would be $3499.92 / month if 100% financed.
The yearly cost of the payments would be $41999.04
Over the term of the loan you would pay $1259971.20

The average rental price in the Bay Area is $1450.00
The 30 year cost of this rent is $509400.00

The cost savings in renting vs. buying a house in SF is $750571.20, or $139571.20 more than the value of the house you don't have to sell (assuming it keeps it's value).

The US has:
Diebold
Cheney & Halliburton
Jack Abramoff
etc.

less access to medical treatment,
The US has a rising percentage of uninsured
because of spiraling costs

more disease,
Yeah.

higher infant mortality,
The US the second highest infant mortality rate in the modern world

lower life expectancy, and in general a much shittier life then you, and me.
Agreed

I for one do feel bad.
I do too, but not just because of worldwide inequality. I feel bad that global outsourcing is not enriching other people in other countries much. I feel bad that corporations are free to pocket vast profits, while escaping tax burdens. I feel bad that the US is sliding downwards instead of managing to pull the rest of the world up. As a resident of the US, I feel guilty that we seem to have an "I've got mine, good luck with yours" philosophy. The free market has costs.

EDUCATE YOURSELF!

$31.5 Trillion Investor Coalition, the Carbon Disclosure Project, Spurs Disclosure of Climate Change Strategies from World's 500 Largest Companies: http://www.cdproject.net/

Learn about how reducing greenhouse gases is GOOD for business! Carbon Down, Profits UP, a report by the Climate Group: http://www.theclimategroup.org/assets/CDPU_2005_v2 .pdf/

Learn about how cap and trade works and how it effectively solved the acid rain problem under the U.S. Clean Air Act - COST-EFFECTIVELY: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/trading/basics/index .html/

And most importantly, climate change is inextricably linked to national security and energy independence. A carbon constrained economy equates to opportunites and investments in a host of clean and efficient energy technologies that are good for all. That's why Silicon Valley is saying that clean tech is the best investment of the 21st century! Just do a little research. The stuff we're told about economic impact of GHG reductions is hogwash.

Just a couple recent articles:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/11/04/BUG07M5S481.DTL/
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentar y06111704.htm/

A bit off-topic, but when it comes to longevity, paper records are hard to beat (with the possible exception of stone tablets). Check out this interesting article :Paper Trail - Can Digital Media Match The Longevity Of Plain Old Print?

A bit OT, but... I recall reading a newspaper article about an Australian flight on which a child was bitten by a taipan, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Fortunately, the child survived. Unfortunately, it had proved impossible to find the snake, even with the help of trained dogs. (Story here.)

Problem was, I was reading this story while sitting on a flight from Sydney up to Cairns. Kept looking under the seats for the rest of the trip...

Can you cite a reference backing up this opinion? Putting thoughts in someone else's head is generally considered a Bad Thing.

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

Linux wasn't initially planned to be an operating system. It was planned to be my personal project to learn about my computer, the CPU

138,385,532 replies with: "Got Pics?"

What, is today Scary Jailtime Story Day or something of the sort?

First, this story about a guy being jailed after he received a fake check and tried to cash it was reportend on interesting-people, then this story about a guy being arrested, because he had a rubber band ball that the TSA thought contained "something metallic" or drugs (also on interesting-people today), and now this story on Slashdot.

Hire Brian Eno to help you?

Why not? He has experience in just this field. (see the middle of this page)

Q: How did you come to compose ``The Microsoft Sound''?

A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, ``Here's a specific problem -- solve it.''

The thing from the agency said, ``We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,'' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ``and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.''

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.

Now Bechtel is leaving.

The San Francisco engineering company's last government contract to rebuild power, water and sewage plants across Iraq expired on Tuesday. Some employees remain to finish the paperwork, but essentially, the company's job is done.

Gannett is also the owner/publisher of the various Military Times newspapers.

Tomorrow, the day before the US Congressional election, all the Military Times individual papers will publish a rare joint editorial calling for the immediate resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary. I don't know that those military papers have ever called for a Defense Sect'y to resign before, and surely not the day before an election. That editorial is aligned with its military readers, rather than its Pentagon and military contractor "suppliers" who both support Rumsfeld, and often report to him.

It looks like Gannett is choosing to plug in directly to its consumers to survive the ongoing shakeout of plummeting newspaper circulation. The real question about the "revolution" at major newspapers is not whether these Gannett moves are the beginning, but rather whether they're an exit strategy, and whether to victory.

Meanwhile, companies like Bechtel are withdrawing from Iraq, even though they haven't accomplished the tasks that they were awarded contracts to do.

Just over one half (56%), and steadily decreasing.
source: Military Times Media Group survey

Support the Troops, Oppose the Policy
Veterans Against The Iraq War

if you can't say anything good about Bush then you have no choice but to lie about his opposition.

Two years ago, Kerry's supporters were potraing their party and candidate as the smart and well-educated bunch — contrasting Kerry's unknown-but-presumed-excellent academic achievements with the publicized mediocre ones by Bush. Kerry would not release his own records...

Several months later — in the summer of 2005 — Kerry's records were released and turned out to be worse than Bush's. Kerry's overall average was one-point less, and he got D's in Geology, two History courses, and in Political Science... Bush's only D was in Astronomy...

We don't need to lie about Kerry. He — a 20-year US Senator with nothing to talk about during a presidential campaing except his 4-months stint in Vietnam — is a disgrace on his own. Waffles.

It starts at the top, and all the way down they are rotten

Whew! It's a good thing that the democrat's leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, is clean as a whistle . Not counting good old fashioned $90k-in-the-freezer bribe-taking by a congressional democrat, or president who hands out pardons in exchange for cashflow or sells access in exchange for illegal donations from China , it seems that high-end real estate transactions are a favorite pastime for the traditional representatives of the poor working slobs of the country. *cough Hillary*

There have been a lot of comments along the lines of "The old paper/optical scan system works fine, why go electronic".

There are many reasons to move to a different system. Most of them dealing with accessibility. Electronic voting machines can present a ballot in multiple languages, electronic machines could present an audible ballot for the blind or a large print ballot for the sight impaired. Electronic machines are easier to vote on than filling in circles for those with motor skill issues.

A 2003 article presented error rates for the technologies as: 2.5% punch cards, 2.3% touch screen, 1.8% paper ballots, 1.5% optical scan and level machines. The real mission for electronic voting machines is to allow more people to vote unassisted but to do it in a way that is as accurate or more accurate as existing technology. The technology is clearly not available yet.

It seems a lot of reliability issues result from the use of touch screens and touch screen calibration. It seems that a machine with buttons around the screen (like most ATMs) would make more sense and would more closely duplicate the old lever system that proved to be so accurate. I will admit ignorance of the usability issues for this type of interface.

So the question that needs to be asked is, if a paper audit trail is so important, why is it being universally ignored? The answer lies in the reliability of the printing mechanism and the typical usage scenario that result in voting machines being idle for two years between uses. This was, I believe, the justification for leaving the printer requirement out of the first (defeated) IEEE proposed standard, but also, in some people's opinion, the primary reason why the standard proposal was defeated.

I have already voted in this election. I was offered the choice of touch screen or optical scan ballot, I chose optical scan.

High Court Trims Whistleblower Rights

The Rise Of Pseudo Fascism

Conservatives Without Conscience

Wow. This is inane. I didn't think I needed to specify that Bush wasn't personally wiretapping US phone calls without a warrant. But it was done on his orders. Or are you suggesting that there was a conspiracy to wiretap without Bush's approval? I did forgot to mention that the problem with the wiretapping was that the wiretapping wasn't being approved by the Judicial Branch as required by law. Remember the Judicial Branch? Remember the checks-and-balances-thing to prevent the abuse of power by one branch of government?

Bush has paid journalists to repeat his propaganda? Bullshit. Show me your source for that.

• WASHINGTON - Columnist Armstrong Williams has reached a settlement with prosecutors regarding payments he received by the Education Department to promote President Bush's agenda.
• Education and Medicare policies...
• 1.4 billion dollars spent on spin.. also regarding "the global war on terrorism" and the "dangers of buying drugs from non-US sources"
• Wherein Bush is 'concerned' about reports that the US military is writing propaganda in occupied Iraq. (Either he knew about it, or he has double-standards.)

Routinely censors scientific reports? Strike 2. Source, please.

• Climate research..
• Cosmology...
• Sex education...
• Endangered salmon..
• Medical benefits.."
• Reproductive medicine.."

BUSH delayed the federal response? Strike 3. Bush didn't delay anything.

• House Republicans plan to issue a blistering report on Wednesday that says the Bush administration delayed the evacuation of thousands of New Orleans residents by failing to act quickly on early reports that the levees had broken during Hurricane Katrina.

Osama Bin Laden is still at large? Yes, he is. Why? Because he has multiple Middle-Eastern states cooperating with him and Al-Queda. The search for Bin Laden is still ongoing. We haven't forgotten at all.

• "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - G.W. Bush, 3/13/02"
• "I am truly not that concerned about him." - G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)
• "I don't spend much time on him." -G.W. Bush, six months after 9/11 event. [video]
• Bush withdrew the majority of our troop

Reminds me of the prank they pulled on the Netscape team long time back. Not that this is another prank, but well...

Actually, you wrote that there was a federal program that provided health care to all Americans. You then specified that the program you were on was AHCCCS. The conclusion that you were implying that AHCCCS was available to all American students comes directly from your sloppy writing. And despite your insistence that Medicaid provides health care to everyone, there's still 46 million Americans without health insurance. Even in Arizona, apparently, 18.7% of the population doesn't have health insurance. Oh, and here's a demographic breakdown of the people without insurance.

Furthermore, you don't seem to know the difference between "anecdotes" and "evidence". Your friends, money-driven nice-people that they may be, are going to be pretty self-selectingly biased. You would only meet nurses and/or doctors who decided to emigrate. Beyond that, you're just plain wrong. Every study I've ever seen on the issue has agreed with one fact: The U.S. pays a higher percentage (16%) of it's GDP for health care than any other country in the world. FYI the number is 9.7% in Canada. Thus, your UK doctor friend is simply wrong.

As for why they don't mention AHCCCS, I would hazard a guess that they don't mention the existence of those plans for the same reason they don't enumerate the private plans that exist, the annual budget of NASA, or the percentage of people who drive cars. It's not actually relevent.

For every American killed by a terrorist, 2,427 die of skin cancer, 4,893 expire in car accidents, 9,735 are shot to death by nonterrorists and -- you might want to stub out your cigarette before reading this -- 30,666 are claimed by heart disease and another 18,0746 by cancer.

Google will realize tax writeoffs for the whole thing, a one-time tax credit (or perhaps they will find a way to make the tax credit apply at a lower amount over multiple years), and above and beyond that they will see significantly reduced site power bills.

Think there's any chance Google would start installing solar panels on their data centers? This would be a HUGE gesture of enviro-friendly computing, even if it did cost them a bundle. It would certainly get other data centers and large power consumers (like yahoo and microsoft) to consider following suit. Based on estimates posted at Wikipedia, they consume 20MW of power for their 450,000+ servers (which actually seems really low - only 50W per server?).

Assuming it's more like 80MW of power they consume (equivalent to ~60K homes), I wonder if there'd even be enough high quality solar panels to offset a majority of this power consumption? I guess it makes more sense for them to start building wind farms near their out-of-the-way GooglePlexes. Some 5MW wind turbines are being tested today - hmmm ... let's see, 16 wind turbines vs. 150,000 solar panels ...

BTW: here's a link to a more detailed article on the subject: SF Gate - Google sets sight on solar

Prescient indeed.

Here is a different part of Microsoft's long term strategy -- buying a voice in the academia of IP law. Who knows, maybe they'll have their own Supreme Court Justice or two.

abc7:

Hans Reiser, in turn, denied that movies were to blame for their son's nightmares and accused his wife of having an extramarital affair with Sean Sturgeon, a former friend of his, and that Sturgeon was a danger to the children. ... Sturgeon said he became romantically involved with Nina Reiser only when her husband made it clear that the couple were through.

SFGate.com:

Nina Reiser's boyfriend, Anthony Zografos...

How many boyfriends did she have within two years of divorcing Reiser?

... many of the Amish actually attended his funeral and mourned his death.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/ 10/07/national/a191914D02.DTL

I can't preach to anyone here about hate and revenge myself, due to my past reactions to things, but what those Amish people did really impressed me. Any members of the phoney religions of peace on here(you christians, muslims, jews, etc...) might want to take some notes from the Amish. I realize they are a christian sect, but their EXAMPLE spoke to me louder than the millions of words I've heard come from christians(or the other two "religions of peace"). If all religions did their preaching that way, they'd make the world a better place, instead of the shithole they seem bent on turning it into in the name of their "faith".

http://www.ninareiser.com/inthenews.html

The first link I followed is interesting, too - it says that Hans didn't talk to the police for the whole time his wife was missing, because he was upset that they searched his house...

How can anyone trust the FDA to actually have the consumers, and not the multi-billion dollar food conglomerates interests in mind?

This is the same federal agency that has let the food industry poison us for decades through the use of trans-fats, which have been shown to cause obesity, cancer, and many more health problems. The only reason that they use trans-fats is that it increases the shelf life of foods, which saves the big food companies a few cents on refrigeration and storage costs.

So the food industry would rather save a few cents per package, and doesn't care about poisoning the average american citizen. The FDA has been complicit in this, and has let them get away with it for decades, only in the last couple years have they actually required food companies to even list the amount of trans-fats included in food items. This is for a substance that the FDA has determined there is no safe amount.

No thanks. I don't trust the FDA to protect me from foods that will be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier. I foresee a whole new generation of unhealthy americans that will be dying from strange diseases, none the wiser that it's their poisoned food supply causing it.

The bit about undereducated soldiers may be floating around because the service has been lowering its entrance requirements to include criminals, neo-Nazis, and gang members. They've also lowered their intelligence exam requirements, and heavily recruit from poor neighborhoods where people may not have as many options. (But they don't want gays. Definitely not gays. We have limits, you see.)

So if you're wondering why soldiers are stereotyped as violent, dimwitted brutes, it's because that's the pool the service is currently recruiting from. Probably because most folks aren't enamored of the "spend the next who knows how many years in a sandy hellhole hoping you don't drive over an IED" pitch.

The question is, are we willing to risk total destruction of our economy and pre-industrial revolution living standards over what amounts to little more than a scientific theory?

Tee-hee! Hope you get the +5 for "Funny" for that one!

The questions for policy makers-- which includes the voting public in the effective democracies-- are:

1. WRT studies of mass extinction dynamics:
   1. Should follow-up studies receive more fiscal support from government?
   2. If so, should the funds come from reducing funding for other research, reducing funding for other government activities, or increasing taxation?
   3. If not, should government identify and implement ways to encourage private funding for such studies?
      .
2. WRT modifying the current dependency on fossil fuels:
   The economic costs of continuing this pattern of increasing dependency of the last century are pretty obvious at this point: we will hit peak oil production soon if we haven't already; agriculture in advanced nations is seriously skewed where more of the energy for producing food is coming from petrochemicals (especially diesel fuel) than is coming from photosynthesis; the petrochemical world economy is socially destabilizing to many of the producing nations, giving rise to international terrorism, etc, etc. Even without the green arguments, the case for getting cured of the fossil fuel addiction is obvious to any unbiased observer.
   So the questions are:
   1. Should government put more funding into developing green power generation technologies like wind mills and wave generators?
   2. Should government put more funding into high stakes power generation technologies like fusion reactors, clean fission reactors, conversion of stockpiles of nuclear weapons to fuel, power generation from space elevators, etc?
   3. To what degree should government encourage conservation measures like increased use of mass transit, bicycle commuting, population migration from suburbias to city centers, and so forth?
   4. Does conversion to a hydrogen based transportation industry trade local improvements in environmental quality for greater degradation of the global environment?
   5. What can we realistically expect from a Secretary of State who once had a 129,000 ton oil tanker of Bahamian registry named after her, and who has the political clout to get the boat renamed from the Condoleezza Rice to the Altair Voyager when it suited her political ambitions? (Just throwing that out to see if you're awake)

There are plenty more questions that could be asked. But whether we should risk the total destruction of our current economy isn't a question worth trying to answer-- it's just plain silly. When the oil laden supertanker you are on is drifting toward the rocks, the crew shouldn't question whether it's a good idea to change course. The questions that need to be asked now are which way should we point this boat, and how the hell do we start the damn engine?

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but the major antivirus companies, especially Symantec, have had this coming for a looo-hooong time.

Most virus writers have moved on to even more damaging (trojans, worms) or lucrative (malware) attacks by now, that the major checkers are either too slow to protect against or, in the case of malware, outright refuse to unless the user buys a new product. Meanwhile even Microsoft Word now contains some built-in anti-virus measures, all the major webmail providers have built-in virus scanning, and many new computers don't even HAVE floppy disks.

This is not to discount the dangers of viruses, mind. My dad once took a new computer back to the store because of a virus on it that simulated a memory parity error, and boy was I EVER mad about that. But that was a 486DX running at 66mHz running Windows 3.1, and that was my last personal experience with viruses. They are just not the threat it once was, yet to listen to these guys, you'd think the world was about to explode, constantly, forever.

McAfee was the company that mongered much fear a few years ago about a JPEG virus that was going around. Remember that one?

Symantec is so anxious that people continue to subscribe to their highly lucrative virus definition service that they'll use any combination of the words "Urgent" and "Recommended," and red and boldface text attributes, to get people to pony up for another year of protection they probably don't need, and Microsoft themselves is a major contributor to this funding source by including that little Security Center taskbar icon to nag users into putting antivirus software on their machine.

Antivirus software is the kind of thing that should be provided by the OS manufacturer for free, because it makes the OS more secure. Windows could certainly use more of that.

I, for one, would not be surprised at all if the test was entirely bogus, in the sense that it did not use the EAST reactor, or DT fusion, or happened at all the way they said it has. There's also a good chance they beat ITER to sustainable fusion, and not using magnetic confinement madness.

Fast-rewind back to last year, and this announcement of Sandia, and report by Haines, that the pinch machine was reliably making plasmas at billions of degrees.

Around the same date as when the experiments were going on, the congress votes billions of dollars of funding for a project to replace existing nuclear warheads with "safer" ones. Hu-uh. I've heard more than one rumor of the Sandia guys placing a Li-H target in the machine for a free test while they were verifying their results. Wanna bet they had confirmation of fusion, just like last time ?

Starting to connect dots already ? How do you make an H bomb go boom ? With an A bomb that initiates a Li-H fusion. That means having to refine Uranium, which is extremely tedious and costly, and highly visible, having a lower power limit of 300 KT, and leaving radioactive dirt behind every explosion. With a Z-pinch detonator, there's no lower power limit, you can have H bombs of any size, leaving no radioactive dirt, and you don't need fancy material that fall under international scrutiny. The billions of degrees it reaches means it can initiate Li-H fusion, or B11-H fusion, which can also be used for power generation much more safely than currently envisioned methods, for example by feeding a Li-H ions spike into the steel plasma, using MHD for controlling the input, and for generating power on the output.

The Chinese and Russians have been building such Z-pinch fusion igniters since the original Sandia announcement, and so have the US, AFAIK. It shouldn't take very long before the first traces of all this start to emerge, until official confirmations.

When does "the kid" stop being a mindless child

When they commit a crime we really don't like.

For a strictly numerical answer, how about 14? I didn't bother to look for anyone younger.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/01/09/BAGRV46SBI1.DTL%20

"It is an extraordinarily complicated process compared to any other state in the country," said Ryan Wiser, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who has studied efforts by 21 states to mandate increases in the use of renewable power. Wiser wrote a paper on California's process titled "Does it Have to be this Hard? Implementing the Nation's Most Complex Renewables Portfolio Standard."

        Wiser said that here, unlike anywhere else, two state agencies -- the California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission -- have regulatory oversight of renewable projects, forcing developers and utilities to work with two distinct bureaucracies.

        And each project faces multiple, and sometimes redundant, monthslong proceedings in front of regulators before getting approval, while most other states only require one.

Nothing to say about the graph I supplied which shows a steady decline in the US's nuclear stockpile? Ok then, lets talk about another of your points.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

But the treaty does not cancel an agreement that the Central Asian nations signed in 1992 that allows Russia to transport and deploy nuclear weapons in Central Asia under certain circumstances. The United States, Britain and France boycotted Friday's signing ceremony because they objected to this aspect of the treaty, said embassy officials and participants in the treaty negotiations. Only Russia and China sent representatives to Kazakhstan to observe the treaty signing.

Doesn't sound like much of a nuclear-free zone to me if Russia can still keep their nukes there "under certain circumstances." Hell, even France agrees with us on this one!

Is it possible to be an effective anonymous journalist? I ask because of events like the HP scandal (HP had journalists investigated) and the jailing of Josh Wolf http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/08/01/MNGVQK97AK4.DTL.