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There are many arguments against a popular vote, but for me, the most compelling is that the President is not supposed to be the leader of the people of the United States of America, but the leader of the United States of America.

But with the electoral college, the President acts like the leader of the United States of Ohio, Missouri, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Also, it encourages people like Bush to make stupid-ass comments such as "What would you expect from a senator from Massachusetts?", without feeling like he is alienating potential voters.

/* DISCLAIMER:

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to your jurisdiction's bar. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything in reliance upon it, then you are a blithering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.*/

Well, now that that's out of the way . . .

Quoth the AC:

Welcome to Contract Law.

If you agreed to their terms of service, you (I assume) agreed to let them fine you.

What right do they have? The rights you gave them when you agreed to their contract.

Only in the simplest AC mind are things always that simple. Those of us who do not live in the AC's land of make believe, however, know differently. It is true that, generally speaking, a man is bound by the terms of the contract he agrees to. However, not all contracts are enforceable. One where one of the parties is not a sui juris adult, i.e., he is a minor or is non compos mentis, is not enforceable. Similarly, the kind of contracts made with each other by guys with names like Knuckles (you know the kind, the ones where they agree to "push da button on this here guy" for a certain sum) are likewise not enforceable because they are a contract to do an illegal act. In the same vein, contracts with terms that are variously described as "unfair and unconscionable" are likewise not enforceable.

With regard to their arbitration clause, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel said just that a couple of years ago. Later, PayPal settled out on a large class action lawsuit, but AFAIK is still being pursued by NY, LA, and ID for operating an unauthorized bank.

They've been saying this in California for awhile

This is not a big deal folks. My spouse works for a financial institution and they block access to Internet based email (e.g. GMail, Yahoo, etc). My current employer blocks ftp access to the outside world. My last employer didn't allow us to bring our cell phones or pagers into the secure computer labs. The computer you use at work is not yours and you can't do with it as you wish. This may be frustrating for us techies but it is the truth. Remember folks that this is intended to be used by corporate users and NOT for home users. This is just a natural progression of companies wanting to make sure that employees don't run off with data that they are not supposed to. Anyone else remember this fiasco?

Killing children is something I personally believe I would choose not to do at any point (barring extreme circumstances, which I beleve makes anyone capable of anything) and no one I know (including my muslim friends) does it either--if one of them did, I'd really want to get inside their brains to know at what point they stopped being rational.

My hope is that all 3 bodies of law are smart enough to transcend their religious confictions and enact laws capable of outlawing things that make a society disfunctional. The Bible has no problem with rape--I however do. I can also see where laws governing monopolies, and driving under the influence have their place as well, but aside from modern cults, you won't see much of this in any religious doctrine.

That's all I'm saying. The moon is a bit past third quarter now. :D

While I'd like to agree, just to stick it to the Republikkkins, Lockyer's a Democrap, he was elected to the position of AG (not appointed by the gov.), and it looks like he may be running for goverbator against Ah-nuld in 2006.

While I'd like to agree, just to stick it to the Republikkkins, Lockyer's a Democrap, he was elected to the position of AG (not appointed by the gov.), and it looks like he may be running for goverbator against Ah-nuld in 2006.

Oops! Here's the wurkin' clicky - A tough lesson on medical privacy Pakistani transcriber threatens UCSF over back pay

Don't like how creditors treat you? PAY YOUR FUCKING BILLS.

How are you supposed to do that if paying said bills will put you at risk of:

1) Not having proper food to eat.
2) Not having proper clothing to wear.
3) Not having proper shelter to live in.

Yes, one should fufill all their financial obligations, but to do so at the expense of one's health and well-being is stupid!

How can one 'PAY [THEIR] FUCKING BILLS' if they are dead, too sick, or otherwise unable to work to earn money to pay said bills? That is the inevitable outcome when one does not pay food/clothing/shelter bills first!

Then, in another thread, the poster said he got $300,000.00 in medical care to save his life. He can't 'pay in full' as his estate is only worth $70,000.00 What should he do?

To address the bigger issue....

Should the American health care system be 100% totally moved to an 'ability to pay' setup to avoid giving needed health care to 'lives not worthy to be lived' because the ones in need cannot afford the health care they need to stay alive!

Here are some 'horror stories' of such thinking

John Q (2002)

License To Kill / Hospitals reserve the right to pull your plug

Then there is the horrific true(?) story of the dying kid who was 'kicked out' out of the emergency room and left to die in an alley(?) on the side of the hospital -- anybody have a URL to that story as I wanted to link to it but couldn't find it via Google.

The signal may be weak, but it's more than enough to be detected by a nearby billboard . Though I do have to partly agree with the GP, if you aren't familar with the way a reviever works, the ban on things like a am/fm radio can seem quite odd.
However, the ban is typcially on ALL electonics devices, weither or not they have any sort of radio circuit, partly at least to prevent the flight crew from having to make that distiction. (Though I suppose bascically everything has a oscillator of some sort in it.)

You trolling, kidding or do you not follow the news?

You might have heard Senator Edward Kennedy's name or something close to it was added to the no-fly list recently and he was prevented on several occasions from flying between Washington and Boston, something he's been doing for decades. It was in fact a violation of the Constitution which forbids obstructing travel of a Congressman. Maybe it was just an accident and there really is a terrorist named Edward Kennedy or Teddy Kennedy or maybe some sick fuck in the Bush administration though it would be funny to throw his name on it to punish him for his outspoken and often harsh criticism of the Bush administration. How names get put on the list is opaque to most American's and its impossible to get yours off it at present. Kennedy only managed by called Tom Ridge the head of Homeland Security and it still took a while.

Here is a link on the ACLU case against the no fly list since some people are trashing the ACLU in this article. They really are a priceless organization if you value your civil liberties.

Some more on Freedom of Information Act inquiries by EPIC trying to find out if activists really have been black listed from flying based on their political views.

Should I go on.....undocumented.......Nothing about the Patriot act excesses I cited is undocumented its in the law.

Don't you hate having to explain a joke?

That said, there really is a MetricYears.com, which is a bit daffy in it's own right. If you don't like that, you could always go for Decimal Birthdays, which is amusing in its own special way.

You can't break the law and then bitch about how the law is wrong. Its questionable if chalk advertisements are legal, companies typically pay permits for that medium. After IBM and NBC outraged people by spray painting messages around town, I think advertisers are treading lightly. If chalk advertising was clearly legal you'd probably see "eat at mcdonalds" all over your city.

Well what's the real complaint, that he was held without a reason or that he was arrested for chalking the sidewalks? Did the cops give him a reason, later on, when they weren't in front of cameras? If not, I agree that's fascist. When asked, "Do you have any fear of being arrested during the Republican Convention?" JK responded: "I think anybody planning an act of civil disobedience has to accept the risk of getting arrested ... There is a chance I could be arrested. Am I criminally defacing property? I don't think so." I think he knew what he was doing was legally questionable.

I work in advertising, so I know chalk art is questionably legal. I guess that's my point. Read for yourself:

Chalk art is one form of guerrilla marketing, an in-your-face, direct-to-the-people kind of advertising. Guerrilla marketing in public spaces can be tricky and even illegal, as Nike and Microsoft found out separately last fall when they took heat from New York City officials for slapping promotional decals on sidewalks and buildings. "I guess we haven't addressed that during any meeting I've attended," says Heather Freeman, who does public relations for Red Sage (www.redsage.com). The chalk art is just supposed to be "fun and friendly." It's unclear whether the city agrees. The District typically requires permits for any disruption of a public space, including an event or activity that might hinder foot traffic or the movement of the disabled on a sidewalk. Permit requests go to the city's Department of Transportation, and permits are issued by its Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs.

Personally, I think it's bullshit if they are enforcing it to different degrees, like letting pro-lifers put messages everywhere but not letting the bike guy get the word out. He obviously wasn't keeping the shit low-profile by talking to the media.

It seems to me that anything to deal with anti-trust and Microsoft is just a calculated facade designed to maintain the status quo.

Bob Cringely wrote an interesting article (covered in Slashdot)explaining the economics of these anti-trust suits and how Micro$oft actually benefits.

And since these companies don't pay taxes or get tax breaks from Republicans, these suits are a sort of different way for the people in Washinton to get paid. Except this time, the trial lawyers get paid too!

So, the lawyer$ sue Micro$oft so that they can take a huge cut of the money they are going to hand over to the politician$. With class-action lawsuits, they have private lawyers (read expensive lawyers) representing individual claimants, most of whom don't care if they ever get the $20 rebate good toward more Microsoft products (because that's probably all they'll get.) This is a calculated public payoff to those in power (lawyers and politicians) by Microsoft to maintain they're monopoly.

Government: Freeze Microsoft!
Microsoft: What do you want? We're busy screwing the marketplace and raping consumers!
Government: This is a shakedown! Give us what we want and we'll let you go about your business.
Microsoft: Here take it! Now get it out here!

So, why doesn't Microsoft just roll over that easy? Cause they're just trying to talk down the car dealer. It's the same reason parents shouldn't get their kids everything they want, because then they'll just become spoiled and want more and more. They guys just fight over how much to they agree to be extorted for, throw in some free software for schools and libraries (cause that's a good campaign story) allowing the violator of the law to further entrench himself on his gang-land turf.

>> (e.g. the 'covering up' of the justice statue because of (heaven forfend) a breast).

Do you know why he covers it up for press conferences? Because he didn't like that the photographers where always positioning their shots so that the breast was right next to his head.
Here is an AP photo showing what I mean
There are many other like this one, this was just first in to come up in my quick google search.

This should come as good news to the Girl Scouts of America, who in 1996 stopped singing "This Land is Your Land" at campfire events along with all other copyrighted music, at least officially.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 03/08/23/MN300070.DTL

not unpatriotic, it's factual.

They go where the work is. Plently of Indian workers programming in .NET and other languages. Your just not tendering for them.

or maybe it's because one of Sun's co-founders is an Indian, and favors Indian workers. This isn't speculation on my part, see Sun's co-founder says Sun favors Indian workers

The quote was:

"At Sun, people from India are favored over almost anybody else."

If Bill Gates said something like this about American workers, he would be called racist. God, I love the American media.

Looking at the respective budgets for the Tomato harvester and the Kill-o-bot really shows where our priorities are as a country.

Since when has killing people been more of a priotiry than say.... eating?

And what the hell does NASA have to do with tomatoes especially in this day and age?

Every bit of this article just weirds me out.

If you were referring to Phelps, this is wholly irrelevant to the discussion. It was not Phelps's decision whether or not he got a spot on the free relay, it was up to the U.S. coaches. And I doubt you can prove to me that Phelps pressured them to put him on the team. Yes I know Gary Hall Sr claimed the coach was under pressure to see that Phelps got as many chances for medals; that does not equate to Phelps applying the pressure. Could he have said he wouldn't accept the spot? Perhaps. But if he thinks the coach is acting in the best interests of the team, why would he? It would be hard to discuss this without again mentioning the person he displaced on that team, Gary Hall. Did you watch the 50m tonight? Did you watch his reaction after he won? Have you seen Phelps act like that yet? I didn't think so.

If you were talking about Crocker deserving to be on the medley relay, then you're right, he did deserve it. But not according to how the U.S. team puts together the medley team -- according to that, Crocker did not deserve it. There was nothing saying that Phelps needed to give up his spot. And if he was such a cocky asshole who can't get enough of the spotlight as you assert, then he wouldn't have given up his spot. But he did. I think this article sums it up best:

Michael Phelps became an Olympic champion by winning more gold medals than all but a handful of competitors ever had.

Then he did something that none of them ever did.

He stepped aside.

And whatever they claim otherwise, they're still getting data from credit reports and the like. So say you're one of the hundreds of thousands of identity theft victims. With ID theft you have rights, and the credit reporting agencies responsibilities, to attempt to fix bad data. Takes 200 hours of your time and never, ever really finishes, but all you lose is your potential new job and potential new car loan.

But in the meantime the bad data gets into the gov't files: now you never can fix it. And your taint creeps out to touch all your associates (like how the casino software catches ex-roommates of ex-roommates of card counters). Now not only do you not get hired after the NCIC screen in the background check, but your buddies and grandparents all get extra airport searches (they should add a nurse they way they do some of those searches... add in a breast or testicular cancer lump screen while you're there). And of course as 1 in 2500 of us is a terrorist any close check of you will find those suspicious degrees of separation in your Orkut links. Hi Mr.Tuttle, your new name is Toast.

From my favorite precient and well-written essay on privacy losses:

"But there also will be tangible, specific harm.

The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm.

"Worse yet, we may never know what negative assumptions or judgments have been made about us in state files... Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight.

" That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state..."

"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society..."

If these errors were merely harmful to the innocent, that would simply be horribly injust and an affront to the ideals of the US. But these errors are also stupidly harmful to safety. From Schneier (via my D.Nelson post)... "almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile..."

From this article on the ACLU's lawsuit: [of people on the list] "the "no-fly" list has resulted in routine stops of passengers without terrorist ties who "have no meaningful opportunity to clear their names," said the complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union... They are detained, interrogated, delayed, embarrassed, humiliated in front of other passengers."

"Plaintiff David Nelson, 34, a trial attorney in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, said he has been stopped more than 30 times -- every flight he's taken..." Its all the Nelsons everywhere, although evidently the one bad one is from Tennessee. From another article "...this week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so."

I do not feel safer that all T. Kennedys or all David Nelsons are being searched. They should hire police to follow the one bad David Nelson around and save those 12,000 searches (assuming 1 trip per year) for random searches of everybody. As Bruce Schneier points out:

"Profiling has two very dangerous failure modes. The first one is obvious. Profiling's intent is to divide people into two categories: people who may be evildoers and need to be screened more carefully, and people who are less likely to be evildoers and can be screened less carefully.

But any such system will create a third, and very dangerous, category: evildoers who don't fit the profile... Evildoers can also engage in identity theft, and steal the identity -- and profile -- of an honest person. Profiling can result in less security by giving certain people an easy way to skirt security.

There's another, even more dangerous, failure mode for these systems: honest people who fit the evildoer profile. Because evildoers are so rare, almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile."

Just a few final notes here to wrap things up. . .

1. NASA public relations and the media presented a very tight argument for falling insulation damage being the culprit in the Columbia disaster. --Historical evidence was presented from the NASA archives purporting that previous missions of both the Columbia and other shuttles had shown some limited damage to heat tiles resulting from foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. The speculation and arguments were that a larger piece of foam striking in a certain way could cause a critical failure of the heat shielding.

2. Despite the recommendation by NASA engineers during the mission that the foam insulation strike in question did not pose a problem and that the mission was in no danger, the conclusion was reversed after the disaster and subsequent investigation.

3. In doing follow-up on this whole story, I ran across this curious item about a photographer who was shooting the Columbia as it first started to break up. He captured an image of an energy bolt striking the Columbia followed by a series of pictures showing a flash and the break-up.

This is a follow up on that story.

The name of the photographer was Jay Lawson, an electrical engineer who works for Sparks defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. Jay was at the time also a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno. He captured his images of the shuttle from the Fleischmann facility.

This is a brief description of his video according to an article in the RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL;

Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.

There is no mention of the energy strike in this article; the reason I included it here was in part to show the value of his film. If you read the article, you can see that NASA sent a letter thanking him for what were considered to be valuable images which indeed showed the earliest stages of the break-up. --This article also seems important to me because these were apparently the images which came directly after the first frame which showed an energy bolt striking the shuttle. Why the energy bolt was not mentioned at all in the article seems very curious to me.

Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it. That also strikes me as a little weird. But perhaps I just wasn't looking hard enough.

So anyway. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the

Just a few final notes here to wrap things up. . .

1. NASA public relations and the media presented a very tight argument for falling insulation damage being the culprit in the Columbia disaster. --Historical evidence was presented from the NASA archives purporting that previous missions of both the Columbia and other shuttles had shown some limited damage to heat tiles resulting from foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. The speculation and arguments were that a larger piece of foam striking in a certain way could cause a critical failure of the heat shielding.

2. Despite the recommendation by NASA engineers during the mission that the foam insulation strike in question did not pose a problem and that the mission was in no danger, the conclusion was reversed after the disaster and subsequent investigation.

3. In doing follow-up on this whole story, I ran across this curious item about a photographer who was shooting the Columbia as it first started to break up. He captured an image of an energy bolt striking the Columbia followed by a series of pictures showing a flash and the break-up.

This is a follow up on that story.

The name of the photographer was Jay Lawson, an electrical engineer who works for Sparks defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. Jay was at the time also a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno. He captured his images of the shuttle from the Fleischmann facility.

This is a brief description of his video according to an article in the RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL;

Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.

There is no mention of the energy strike in this article; the reason I included it here was in part to show the value of his film. If you read the article, you can see that NASA sent a letter thanking him for what were considered to be valuable images which indeed showed the earliest stages of the break-up. --This article also seems important to me because these were apparently the images which came directly after the first frame which showed an energy bolt striking the shuttle. Why the energy bolt was not mentioned at all in the article seems very curious to me.

Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it. That also strikes me as a little weird. But perhaps I just wasn't looking hard enough.

So anyway. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the

Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.

So. . . A bolt of energy striking the Columbia, followed by a bright flash and the break-up of the shuttle.

Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it.

Curious.

So. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the incident; a piece of foam caused damage to heat tiles, which in turn resulted in a critical failure.

The second story is one which comes from two sources; a channeled source claiming an energy weapon was used to shoot down the Columbia, and a photograph of an energy bolt actually striking the shuttle instants before it broke up.

So which is more likely. . ?

One:The U.S. Government can be counted on to not fabricate stories, and that NASA's own engineers who originally said the foam strike did not present a problem were actually wrong.

Two:A photograph of the shuttle being hit by an energy bolt was wrong or fabricated, AND the channeled claim that the Columbia being shot down by an energy bolt was also wrong or fabricated, --and that BOTH were wrong or fabricated by different people in different parts of the country without any contact between each other.

The channeled claim has been instantly disregarded on the basis that it is supposedly impossible that alien intelligence could be in contact with humans. Occam's Razor has been suggested as the means by which 'UFO conspiracy' theory should be disregarded and indeed scorned.

Interestingly, Occam was a monk who

Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.

So. . . A bolt of energy striking the Columbia, followed by a bright flash and the break-up of the shuttle.

Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it.

Curious.

So. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the incident; a piece of foam caused damage to heat tiles, which in turn resulted in a critical failure.

The second story is one which comes from two sources; a channeled source claiming an energy weapon was used to shoot down the Columbia, and a photograph of an energy bolt actually striking the shuttle instants before it broke up.

So which is more likely. . ?

One:The U.S. Government can be counted on to not fabricate stories, and that NASA's own engineers who originally said the foam strike did not present a problem were actually wrong.

Two:A photograph of the shuttle being hit by an energy bolt was wrong or fabricated, AND the channeled claim that the Columbia being shot down by an energy bolt was also wrong or fabricated, --and that BOTH were wrong or fabricated by different people in different parts of the country without any contact between each other.

The channeled claim has been instantly disregarded on the basis that it is supposedly impossible that alien intelligence could be in contact with humans. Occam's Razor has been suggested as the means by which 'UFO conspiracy' theory should be disregarded and indeed scorned.

Interestingly, Occam was a monk who

Then tey had the stupid idea and buddies decided to kick out Hewlett (who at least knew that the employee loyalty went both ways, and recognised the strength in their printers), and decided to , support Carly's silly idea of

1(HP) + 1(Compaq) + 1/2(Dec) = 0.95(HPQ)

which made them #1 for a very brief moment until they decimated themselves with the first major layoffs in cocmpany history making themselves #2 or worse in most things within a quarter or two after they were #1. Amazing that they try that hard to become #1 (which for some reason they pitched to investors as being more important than having a sustainable business), only to then trim themselves down to be #2 to save costs.

Turns out Hewlett was right in the ind. They were a great printer company, and if they ditch the Compaq crap and the random software that they bought and never used (remeber the "$470 million mistake in buying Bluestone"), they might become a great printercompany again.

Between Compaq&HP this should be a case study of how stupid executive decisions can kill a company. They had the best CPUs (Alpha, and PA-RISC), the best search engine (Alta Vista), etc. They could dhave been Intel+Google.

Now what the hell have they become? A more expensive(at least til they finish their layoffs)-than-Dell reseller of Wintel. God what an embarassment.

Bring back Walter Hwelett!!!! At least he rememberd and understood what HP once stood for.

My apologies; looking at the spokes image, it looks like they put a voyager image up there on the Cassini site for comparison; that's a voyager image, and not a Cassini image. Nonetheless, Saturn's magnetic field is irregular; there've been lots of surprises that may well be related to this, such as Saturn's radiation belts.

Of course, on a more basic level, since the spokes are driven by Saturn's magnetic field, it is only reasonable to expect notable changes in them depending on how the planet and its field are oriented with respect to each other.

Well, fine. Nobody's suggesting that the airlines forbid you from flying under your real name, so that your family is notified if your plane crashes. Your choice.

However, many political activists have also been screened out of commercial airline flight. Google for "tsa political activist" and read the stories yourself. Or here is a representative story:

No-fly blacklist snares political activists

John Gilmore wants to travel to Washington, DC to petition his government. Maybe I want to fly out to Las Vegas for the next DefCon without getting into a FBI database. Maybe you want to fly to a WTO meeting or a political convention, either to attend or to protest.

Of course, you can come back and say "the airlines have a security interest in knowing the identity of their customers". I acknowledge that. Perhaps that overrides the liberty of passengers to travel anonymously; perhaps not. However, that's different from your desire to declare your name. You can choose to declare your name, for your own reasons, without stomping on other's people's rights not to declare theirs.

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.

All I know is that a large part of the populous (senior citizens) get in a large number of accidents yet also drive very slowly. If they really wanted to develop a system that would reward safe drivers they would have to find a way of mesuring the driver's reaction times (the most lacking part of an elderly person's driving skills).

A ricent side note: The NTSB approved a reccomendation standardzing the "black boxes" in cars like they have in trains and planes, although it stopped short of requiring them. I had herd this was prompted by an accident in Santa Monica, CA last year, where an elderly man crashed into the farmer's market there. Supposedly, he inadvertently stepped on the gas pedal when he was going for the break.

I wonder how many discounts this gentleman would have been in for had he been using the system mentioned above, (i.e. a system which gives discounts simply for driving at or below the speedlimit).

Here's a flash back from 2002:

"Banks, insurance companies and other corporations spent more than $20 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses during the successful fight against a measure to protect the financial privacy of consumers, state records show."

2002 Sfgate

It's not slowing down. Media consolidation is also reducing the likelihood that your average Svensson is going to be aware or informed of issues not to the advatage of major sponsors or owners.

It's up to those that are aware to increase that level of awareness.

I'm not sure how my statement that a large corrupt union in league with corrupt government is a bad thing makes you think that I am somehow in favor of communism, especially the soviet variety...

The job requirements for a prison guard are a high-school diploma and a 6 week training course. The problem is that by handing out political support, the union has gotten unreasonable levels of control over hiring and administration of the prisons...it is no longer under the control of the prison "ownership", the state of California. They even successfully 'fired' a state investigator who was looking into and had found evidence of corruption and bribery in the prisons, because the investigation was done without union permission...

Attempts to change this are met with "We'll vote you out of office" and "We'll contribute millions to your opponent in the next election", so the pansies in the government just keep licking the boots of the guard union, for their own personal good, rather than the good of the people of the state.

The point is that politicians and unions can be just as corrupt, if not moreso, than a corporation in protecting their individual interests at the expense of the public good.

Some links for your pleasure:
Contra Costa Times
Sacramento Bee
SFGate

"The obvious one is the sturgeon, which only become reproductively mature around the age of ten," he said, "so perhaps you could have them reared by another species which develops much faster."

Remember, your tax burden includes property taxes. Even if you don't own real estate yourself, you would be paying it through your rent. Sorry it doesn't get spelled out for you on your receipt. :)

"This sort of thing is of little use to anyone but criminals."

I agree, only for criminals and America doesn't need it since it's free enough as it is. It's not like lawyers are suing people left and right for calling them shyster! It's not like the government employees were silenced and faced retaliation for trying to warn of 9/11! Who would use such a system except for these, and these, and these people who needed to publish incriminating memos that went against the public good.

P.S. if there isn't a +1 sarcastic option for me, you can give parent a -1 for being an idiot.

Oh yeah, here's the link. What does this prove?

All GM and Ford cars already have this, and they make the data available in the event of accidents.

Does anyone know if any of the other large manufacturers (e.g., BMW, Toyota, Honda) do this? Is there a list somewhere?

Here is a link to see how the data is being used from GM and Ford vehicles.

Linux has a reputation for performance, reliability and low cost, though Microsoft and others have questioned whether it's in fact faster, cheaper and more secure in the long run than proprietary operating systems.

This is a riot!! Micro$oft is questioning whether linux is more secure than Winblows?!?! Yeah - and cows are flying out of my butt, too!!

I'm getting one for sure!

Then I'll be heading to Lake Tahoe to discover whether or not the legends are true...

TOo bad I've boycotted HP's products in light of CEO Carly Fiorina's lobbying for accelerated outsourcing of American Technology jobs to oversea's firms. Great Editorial on the subject

While this might not be a problem for gross manipulations (the faked John Kerry/Jane Fonda photo being a recent example) I can imagine a class of images where subtle manipulations caused great effects and were not readily distinguishable from compression artifacts.

Maybe even get rid of the Democratics and Republicans, two parties that claim to be different but are both the same cultural poison. Come on, give Nader a chance, he has some great ideas. :)

Actually, I don't think Nader is all that different.

Maybe even get rid of the Democratics and Republicans, two parties that claim to be different but are both the same cultural poison. Come on, give Nader a chance, he has some great ideas. :)

Actually, I don't think Nader is all that different.

It looks like John Kerry has a net worth of at least $164 million, his wife has a net worth of an estimated $1 billion, Edwards has a net worth between $12 million and $60 million, Dick Cheney at about $50 million, and finally George W. Bush at about $15 million.

Yeah, Orrin wants to make Schwarzenegger prez!

He wants it to be legal for foreign borns to be prez.

I'm liberal and progressive and all - but I'm still an American.

If we can't find someone born here to be the President then that is just sad. Nader would have a chance then though.

...and dont forget that a laser was bounced off the moon as well to measure the distance to the moon very accurately and test Einstein's theory of gravity... How did a laser bounce off the mirror placed on the moon if it the moon landing was hoaxed?

I believe this happened for a few reasons:

1. War
2. Sympathy
3. Elections

Well, yes. War begets violence, violence begets suffering on all sides, and suffering costs a lot of money. The US is caring for civilians hurt in the fighting as well as our own. Soldiers are coming home with radically life-altering injuries, and the govermnment is responsible for taking care of them. Sometimes these injuries are so awful that the family must make financial sacrifices just to properly care for its loved one. While the soldiers are abroad fighting, they need someone to care for their families, including medical attention, financial support, etc., especially since soldiers aren't exactly raking it in.

Secondly, the generation that begat the Baby Boom is aging (and dying rapidly), and geriatric veterans demand a higher level of care in general. Vietnam vets are receiving their AARP membership cards; they need care as well.

One could argue that giving more money to soldiers and the VA would somehow encourage the war machine to churn on. This is quite nonsensical. The government is only (trying to) take care of its own (though not doing a good job of it). It has a responsibility for the men and women who serve it. Even without war, the VA needs more funding to properly care for our aging vets as they, and any other person, should be treated: with respect, dignity, and the best methods out there. Of course, one could debate what exactly is 'best', and for whom it is best, but this country supposedley has very capable men and women elected to make those decisions.

As far as sympathy goes, I'm greatly doubt that this will cause mass public outrage anywhere near the level required to receive the requested budget. Is it that we don't care? Maybe. Perhaps it is also because NASA is only forefront in the minds of most Americans when it is on the front page of the daily news or on the news channel . . . repeatedley. This generation enjoys NASA and what it has brought the US as a nation, but doesn't have the attachment our parents have. We take it for granted. We didn't live through the fervor of the Space Race. On the other hand, young people usually don't hit the polls in droves or contact their representative that often (or at all), so who knows?

As for elections, this is not an issue. It's not a first tier issue or a second tier issue. It comes off more as a special platform issue. Not to say that it is, but that is where it probably rests in the mind of the average American. Even if it was a big ticket issue, I doubt it would noticeably change the outcome of the presidential election. IMHO, I believe that Americans are more concerned about (in no particular order) the war, governmental transparency, the economy, jobs, taxation, education, foreign relations and policy, civil liberties, etc. In light of these topics, NASA is an afterthought, something to be used to one-up somebody else or help someone's interests to better the country in response to foreseen threats (see The Cold War). For this to become a true election year issue, the Baby Boomers need to be outraged. But this has been pointed out by other /.ers, and it holds.

While it may have something to do with your firearm, it's probably most likely the case that your name matches the soundex code of the intended target. At which point, thou art screwed...

No one with even a small understanding of the scientific process, let alone an interest in scientific progress, can vote Republican in good conscience. Why? Because both wings of Republican party are actively opposed to scientific progress. They will slow walk, whitewash, and when all else fails, flat out lie, to prevent or obscure the truth.

On the buisness side you have those that ignore 30 years of studies concluding that the average global temperature is increasing, and that this increase is directly caused by human activity. ("Needs more study.") You have those that lie before congress, and in congress, that nicotine is not addictive. Then you have those that spout such nonsense that trees cause polution and ketchup is a vegetable.

Then from the religious wing you've got those not only opposed to teaching evolution and the Big Bang, but promoting that world was formed on a tuesday afternoon 5000 years ago. They've even enlisted the federal govenerment to promoting the myth that the Grand Canyon didn't take million of years to form, but rather was formed over the course of a few hours after a global flood.